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Caging  the  Dragon 

The  Containment  of  Underground 
Nuclear  Explosions 


Distribution  authorized  to  U.S.  Government  agencies 
and  their  contractors;  Test  and  Evaluation,  30  June 
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13.  ABSTRACT  (Maximum  200  words) 

The  science  of  the  containment  of  U.S.  underground  tests  is  documented  through  a  series  of  interviews 
of  leading  containment  scientists  and  engineers. 


14,  SUBJECT  TERMS 


15.  NUMBER  OF  PAGES 


Containment 

Underground  Nuclear  Testing 

17.  SECURITY  CLASSIFICATION  Il8.  SECURITY  CLASSIFICATION  19.  SECURITY  CLASSIFICATION 
OF  REPORT  OF  THIS  PAGE  OF  ABSTRACT 

UNCLASSIFIED  UNCLASSIFIED  UNCLASSIFIED 

NSN  7540-280-5500 


20.  LIMITATION  OF  ABSTRACT 


Standard  Form  298  (Rev.2-89) 

Prescribed  by  ANSI  Sts.  239-18 


CONTENTS 


Preface  vii 
Introduction  1 

1  THE  ORIGINS  OF  CONTAINMENT  5 

2  THE  RAINIER  EVENT  31 

3  THE  MORATORIUM  AND  THE  RETURN  TO  TESTING  59 

4  THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CONTAINMENT  PROGRAMS  87 

5  THE  NEVADA  TEST  SITE  1  1  3 

6  EARTH  MATERIALS  AND  THEIR  PROPERTIES  147 

7  LOGGING  AND  LOGGING  TOOLS  179 

8  ENERGY  COUPLING  AND  PARTITION  207 

9  CAVITIES  AND  HOW  THEY  GROW  229 

10  CAVITY  COLLAPSE,  CHIMNEYS  AND  CRATERS  265 

11  THE  RESIDUAL  STRESS  CAGE  291 

12  HYDROFRACTURES  325 

13  BLOCK  MOTION  347 

14  DEPTHS  OF  BURIAL,  DRILLING  365 

15  EMPLACEMENT  HOLES,  STEMMING,  PLUGS,  GAS 

BLOCKS  391 

16  TUNNELS  AND  LINE-OF-SIGHT  PIPES  419 

17  PIPE  CLOSURE  HARDWARE  453 

18  PIPE  FLOW  465 

19  CODES  AND  CALCULATIONS  495 

20  CURRENT  PRACTICE  523 

21  SOMETIMES  THE  DRAGON  WINS  549 

22  ABOUT  THE  CONTAINMENT  EVALUATION  PANEL  571 

23  THOUGHTS,  OPINIONS,  CONCERNS  587 

Appendix:  The  People  of  the  Book  613 
Index  7 1  1 


Preface 


vii 


Preface 

Robert  Brownlee,  in  a  talk  given  at  the  Monterey  Containment 
Symposium  on  August  26,  1981,  said: 

“It  has  been  said  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  history,  only 
biography.  Assuming  this  to  be  true,  a  description  of  the  evolution 
of  containment  would  contain  the  story  of  the  people  involved  -  - 
their  experiments,  beliefs,  motivations,  successes,  failures,  foibles, 
and  idiosyncrasies.  We  might  then  be  able  to  understand  our  current 
faith  and  practice,  and  their  origins,  in  a  far  better  way. 

“Even  for  the  earliest  moments  of  containment  of  under¬ 
ground  nuclear  tests,  when  the  number  of  individuals  involved  in 
the  subject  was  very  few,  the  complexity  of  the  subject,  and  the 
parallel  and  relatively  independent  pursuits  of  Los  Alamos  and 
Livermore,  make  a  retrieval  of  biographical  knowledge  quite  im¬ 
possible.” 

In  that  context,  this  book  is  an  attempt  to  approach  that 
impossibility.  It  has  been  my  pleasure  to  have  had  the  opportunity 
to  talk  with  people  I  know  who  played  a  role  in  the  development  of 
our  current  faith  and  practice.  This  book  is  really  theirs,  and  that  is 
shown  in  the  extensive  quotations  from  people  who  have  spent  much 
of  their  professional  careers  dealing  with  the  truly  difficult  prob¬ 
lems  encountered.  This  book  does  not  deal  with  the  formulae  and 
the  mathematics,  the  charts  and  graphs  that  make  up  the  structure  of 
the  scientific  and  engineering  practice  of  the  containment  of  under¬ 
ground  nuclear  explosives.  Those  things  can  be  found  in  the 
documents  and  reports  written  by  many  of  the  individuals  who  have 
worked  in  the  field  during  the  past  thirty-five  years  or  so. 

Here  there  are  only  the  recollections,  memories,  opinions,  and 
stories  of  some  of  those  many  people.  Recollections  can  be  faulty, 
memories  fade,  opinions  change,  and  stories  often  become  better  in 
the  telling,  but  taken  as  a  whole  they  may  convey  something  of  how 
we  came  to  be  where  we  are  in  the  containment  world. 

One  regret  I  have  is  that  the  quoted  printed  word  does  not 
capture  the  emotional  content  of  the  spoken  word  -  -  the  humor, 
satire,  frustration,  sincerity  that  I  heard  during  these  talks  that  we 
had.  All  are  muted  in  a  quotation  on  the  printed  page.  The  inflection 
of  a  single  word  can  change  the  way  a  statement  is  to  be  taken,  but 
how  to  convey  that?  The  only  way  I  know  to  attempt  it  is  to  give 
some  brief  background  on  each  of  the  people,  in  their  own  words. 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


viii 

That  doesn’t  have  to  do  directly  with  containment,  but  it  does  have 
to  do  with  perhaps  putting  the  statements  of  that  person  in  a  personal 
context. 

As  for  the  context  of  myself,  I  went  in  1 952  from  being  a  newly 
graduated  graduate  student  who  had  done  his  thesis  work  at  the  U. 
C.  Radiation  Laboratory,  to  work  with  Herb  York  on  what  he 
initially  described  to  me,  somewhat  vaguely,  as  a  “small  project.” 
I  somehow  got  the  impression  that  it  would  be  in  Berkeley,  and 
would  deal  with  controlled  fusion  as  a  source  of  power,  and  indeed 
that  was  what  I  started  to  do.  A  few  months  later  I  had  moved  to 
Livermore  with  my  family,  and  by  then  I  was  aware  that  the  “small 
project”  was  a  second  nuclear  weapons  design  Laboratory.  Nine 
years  later  the  Lawrence  Livermore  Radiation  Laboratory  had  a 
staff  of  perhaps  5000  people,  and  I  became  involved  with  nuclear 
test  work. 

Since  that  time  in  1961  I  have  been  associated  with  the  test 
program  of  the  United  States  in  various  capacities.  First  as  the 
Division  Leader  of  L  Division,  the  people  at  Livermore  responsible 
for  the  design  and  fielding  of  the  diagnostic  measurements  on 
Livermore  nuclear  experiments.  Later  as  the  person  responsible  for 
the  overall  Livermore  Test  Program,  and  since  1971  as  the  Chair¬ 
man  of  the  DOE-NVO  Containment  Evaluation  Panel,  whose  func¬ 
tion  is  better  explained  later  in  this  book. 

I  can  say  from  my  own  knowledge  that  the  people,  my  friends, 
whose  words  are  quoted  in  this  book,  are  all  dedicated  individuals 
who  grappled  with  the  dragon,  and  eventually  caged  him,  albeit 
uneasily,  because  they  retained  their  sense  of  perspective,  and  of  the 
limitations  of  their  knowledge,  while  doing  so.  I  did  not  say 
“subdued  him”,  because  they  know,  as  I  know,  that  whenever  a 
nuclear  explosion  occurs  he  is  there,  just  as  enormously  strong, 
clever,  and  dangerous  as  ever.  Those  who  may  be  called  upon 
someday  to  do  an  underground  detonation  should  remember  that. 
The  amount  of  energy  released  by  a  “small”  one  kiloton  nuclear 
device  is  simply  beyond  human  experience  and  comprehension, 
except  possibly  that  of  the  unfortunate  people  in  Japan  who  were 
near  the  second  and  third  nuclear  detonations. 


IX 


It  was  the  Department  of  Energy  Nevada  Operations  Office 
which  supported  this  work,  and  to  the  people  there,  particularly 
Richard  Navarro,  I  give  my  grateful  acknowledgement.  Byron 
Ristvet  of  the  Department  of  Defense  Defense  Nuclear  Agency  was 
principally  responsible  for  arranging  the  support  required  for  the 
printing  of  the  book.  Without  his  interest  and  the  Defense  Nuclear 
Agency's  support,  the  publication  of  this  work  might  well  not  have 
happened. 

The  people  I  talked  with  were  always  cooperative  in  giving  me 
their  time  for  the  interviews  and  for  editing  the  transcripts,  and  my 
thanks  go  to  each  of  those  quoted  in  the  text.  Gary  Higgins  and  Bob 
Brownlee  were  generous  with  their  time  in  reviewing  the  book  and 
offered  many  valuable  suggestions  on  various  points. 

The  table  on  page  572  was  compiled  by  Gregory  Van  der  Vink 
of  OTA.  The  pictures  in  the  book  were  provided  by  Roger  Meade 
of  Los  Alamos,  Steve  Wofford  of  Livermore,  and  John  Weydert  of 
Sandia.  My  appreciation  also  goes  to  the  unknown  Livermore  artist 
who,  in  the  early  seventies,  captured  the  feeling  of  many  people  who 
were  grappling  with  containment  problems. 

Particular  thanks  are  due  two  people.  Beverly  Babcock  as¬ 
sisted  with  many  of  the  interviews  and  transcriptions.  She  was  also 
most  helpful  in  such  matters  as  arranging  times  and  places  for  the 
interviews,  and  gently  encouraging  the  interviewees  to  finish  and 
return  their  edits.  Aside  from  providing  photographs  for  the  illus¬ 
trations,  Steve  Wofford  gave  unfailing  support  on  many  questions 
of  how  best  to  arrange  the  chapters  and  format  the  text.  He  deserves 
my  thanks  for  helping  in  a  very  substantial  way  on  this  project. 


1 


Introduction 

The  science  of  the  containment  of  the  radioactive  by-products 
of  a  nuclear  detonation  exists  only  because  there  was  a  period  of 
from  1957  to  1992  when  nuclear  detonations  were  carried  out 
underground  by  the  United  States,  the  Soviet  Union,  the  United 
Kingdom,  and  France. 

The  elements  of  several  scientific  and  engineering  fields  are 
inextricably  intertwined  when  people  attempt  to  understand,  calcu¬ 
late,  and  predict  what  will  happen  when  a  nuclear  detonation  occurs 
underground.  The  interactions  which  occur  do  so  in  regimes  of 
material  interactions,  times,  temperatures,  and  pressures  that  are 
never  encountered  in  any  other  field. 

The  earth,  from  the  surface  to  the  mile  or  so  in  depth  that  has 
been  used  in  underground  nucleartesting  is  an  inhomogeneous  body 
of  materials.  Such  things  as  the  density,  the  strength  ,  the  chemical 
composition,  and  the  water  content  of  the  rocks  vary  in  a  three 
dimensional  fashion  over  almost  any  dimensional  element  that  is 
chosen,  ranging  from  molecular  size  to  kilometers.  Given  the 
volume  over  which  significant  effects  take  place,  the  expense  of 
obtaining  sufficient  representative  samples  to  test  in  the  laboratory, 
and  the  fact  that  laboratory  measurements  cannot  reproduce  many 
of  the  regimes  of  interest,  it  is  not  possible  to  know  all,  or  even  most, 
of  the  details  of  the  medium  where  the  detonation  takes  place. 

So,  empirical  rules  are  developed,  approximations  are  made 
and  are  used  in  computer  codes  to  model  the  behavior  of  the  earth 
materials  following  a  detonation,  but  there  is  a  further  complica¬ 
tion.  Important  processes  occur  during  a  time  span  that  ranges  from 
fractions  of  a  microsecond  to  hours.  Different  measurement  tech¬ 
niques  and  different  calculational  codes  are  required  for  different 
parts  of  this  time  span,  and  somehow  must  be  linked  together  to  try 
to  understand  the  overall  picture  of  what  happens. 

In  such  a  situation  experience  and  empirical  evidence  from 
previous  detonations  assumes  a  considerable  importance  when  try¬ 
ing  to  judge  what  will  happen  when  a  particular  detonation  takes 
place  in  some  specific  location.  The  experience  and  evidence  that 
there  is  has  been  gathered  over  the  years,  sometimes  in  a  costly 
fashion.  Experience  and  its  role  in  judgement  is  difficult  to  codify 
and  make  available  to  people  who  might  be  newly  charged  with  the 
responsibility  to  detonate  a  device,  obtain  the  necessary  data  from 


2 

it,  and  simultaneously  “successfully  contain"  the  radioactive  mate¬ 
rials  produced.  Such  a  situation  may  never  arise;  if  it  does  perhaps 
the  words  here  may  be  helpful. 


3 


1 

The  Origins  of  Containment 

To  discuss  the  containment  of  nuclear  explosions  it  would  be 
helpful  to  have  an  understanding  of  what  “containment”  is.  Unfor¬ 
tunately,  there  is  no  simple  definition,  or  indeed,  no  uniform  agree¬ 
ment  as  to  what  it  is.  Basically,  it  is  whatever  someone  in  the 
appropriate  position  of  authority  says  it  is,  as  is  the  case  with  many 
politically  defined  terms.  And  that  also  means  that  what  it  is  can 
change  from  time  to  time. 

There  are  documents  which  shed  some  light  on  this.  The  most 
important  is  the  Nuclear  Test  Ban  Treaty,  signed  on  August  5,  1 963 
by  the  Soviet  Union,  the  United  Kingdom,  and  the  United  States. 
This  Treaty  called  for  the  signatory  nations  to  conduct  nuclear 
detonations  only  underground,  and  in  such  a  way  that  there  would 
be  no  nuclear  debris  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  State  which 
conducted  the  detonation.  The  operative  article  of  the  Treaty  which 
relates  to  what  would  become  “containment”,  as  it  is  currently 
known  in  the  United  States,  is  Article  I,  Section  1.  of  the  English 
version. 


Article  I 

1.  Each  of  the  Parties  to  this  Treaty  undertakes  to 
prohibit,  to  prevent,  and  not  to  carry  out  any  nuclear 
weapon  test  explosion,  or  any  other  nuclear  explosion,  at 
any  place  under  its  jurisdiction  or  control: 

(a)  in  the  atmosphere;  beyond  its  limits,  including  outer 
space;  or  underwater,  including  territorial  waters  or 
high  seas;  or 

(b)  in  any  other  environment  if  such  explosion  causes 
radioactive  debris  to  be  present  outside  the  territorial 
limits  of  the  State  under  whose  jurisdiction  or  control 
such  explosion  is  conducted. 

This  seems  clear  enough,  but  there  are  some  things  that,  on 
careful  examination  of  subparagraph  (b),  are  open  to  interpretation. 
The  first,  and  most  important  of  these,  are  the  words  “  .  .  .  causes 


5 


6 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


radioactive  debris  to  be  present  .  .  .  “  What  comprises  the  radioac¬ 
tive  debris  of  a  nuclear  explosion?  Is  it  any  radioactive  product 
produced  by  the  explosion?  Or  is  it  only  those  radioactive  products 
which  will  ultimately  be  deposited  on  the  ground,  and  thereby 
become  “debris”  -  -  the  dictionary  definition  of  which  is:  “The 
scattered  remains  of  something  broken  or  destroyed;  ruins”?  This 
could  be  interpreted  as  meaning  that  if  you  cannot  go  about  the 
ground  and  find  “scattered  remains,”  or  fallout  particles,  you  have 
not  violated  the  Treaty.  Hence,  any  release  of  noble  gases,  which 
dilute  in  the  atmosphere,  which  are  biologically  inert,  and  which  do 
not  deposit  on  the  ground,  do  not  count.  The  answer  to  this  question 
of  interpretation  is  of  considerable  importance  to  the  people  who  are 
charged  with  conducting  a  nuclear  detonation,  and  at  the  same  time 
with  complying  with  the  terms  of  the  Treaty. 

With  one  interpretation,  a  seepage  of  gases  from  a  detonation, 
however  large,  would  not  be  considered  a  violation,  no  matter  where 
or  how  detected,  because  they  would  not  be  considered  “debris.” 
Using  the  other  interpretation,  such  a  seepage  would  be  a  violation, 
if  large  enough  to  be  detected  outside  the  State  boundaries. 

Now  consider  the  words  “.  .  .  to  be  present  outside  the 
territorial  limits  of  the  State  under  whose  jurisdiction  or  control  . 

.  .”  In  order  for  something  to  exist  in  this  context,  somebody  has 
to  know  it’s  there.  If  radioactive  material  did  cross  the  border  ofthe 
State  conducting  the  detonation,  and  someone,  with  some  instru¬ 
ment,  did  detect  the  activity,  then  the  Treaty  has  been  violated.  If 
the  material  is  not  detected  outside  the  territorial  limits,  for  what¬ 
ever  reason,  it  is  difficult,  or  impossible  to  claim  that  a  violation  has 
occurred. 

Another  document  that  can  be  considered  as  defining 
containment  in  the  United  States  is  the  Charter  of  the  Containment 
Evaluation  Panel.  The  relevant  passages  concerning  containment 
itself  are  Articles  III,  subparagraphs  A  and  C,  and  Article  VIII 
subparagraph  F.  These  are: 

III  A  Emplacement  and  firing  of  each  nuclear  device  will 
be  conducted  in  a  manner  that  conforms  with  United 
States  obligations  under  all  Nuclear  Test  Treaties. 


Origins 


7 


III  C  Each  test  will  be  designed  to  be  successfully 
contained.  Special  cases  will  be  referred  to  DOE/Deputy 
Assistant  Secretary  for  Military  Application  (DASMA), 
for  approval. 

VIII  F  Successful  Containment:  Containment  such  that 
a  test  results  in  no  radioactivity  detectable  off  site  as 
measured  by  normal  monitoring  equipment  and  no  unan¬ 
ticipated  release  of  radioactivity  on  site  within  a  24  hour 
period  following  execution.  Detection  of  noble  gases 
which  appear  on  site  at  long  times  after  an  event  due  to 
changing  atmospheric  conditions  is  not  unanticipated. 
Anticipated  releases  will  be  designed  to  conform  to  spe¬ 
cific  guidance  from  DOE/DASMA  (NV-176,  Revision  5, 
Planning  Directive  for  Underground  Nuclear  Tests  at  the 
Nevada  Test  Site  (U)). 

Note  that  the  word  “debris"  does  not  appear.  For  there  to  be 
successful  containment,  it  is  “radioactivity”  that  is  not  to  be  de¬ 
tected  off  site,  and  this  term  certainly  includes  the  noble  gases.  The 
boundaries  of  the  Test  Site  are  much  closer  to  the  event  than  the 
borders  of  the  United  States,  hence  “successful  containment”  is  a 
much  more  rigorous  standard  than  that  given  by  using  either  inter¬ 
pretation  of  “debris”  in  the  Treaty.  Further,  there  should  be  “no 
unanticipated  release  of  radioactivity  on  site  within  a  24  hour  period 
following  execution.”  The  implication  is  that  an  unanticipated 
release  of  any  amount  of  radioactivity  within  the  24  hour  period  is 
a  failure  to  achieve  successful  containment.  The  monitoring  equip¬ 
ment  which  might  be  used  to  detect  such  an  unanticipated  release  is 
not  specified,  unlike  the  case  of  detection  off  site  where  “normal 
monitoring  equipment,”  whatever  that  is,  is  to  be  used. 

What  occurred  between  1945  and  1963  that  led  to  the  Treaty, 
generally  known  as  the  Partial  Test  Ban  Treaty? 

It's  almost  always  true  of  any  organization  that  there  are 
outside  influences  that  make  that  organization  change.  It 

seldom  comes  from  within.  V.  Leimbach 

And  so  it  was  with  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission,  the  Labo¬ 
ratories,  and  the  field  test  organizations. 


8 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Trinity,  the  first  nuclear  detonation,  was  carried  out  on  July  1 6, 
1945,  atop  a  100  foot  tower.  For  the  next  many  years  that  was  one 
of  the  basic  methods  for  doing  experiments  with  nuclear  devices. 
There  were  variations,  of  course;  the  air  drop  and  the  underwater 
detonations  in  Crossroads  are  examples.  Sometimes  the  tower  was 
short,  or  non-existent,  and  the  device  was  detonated  on  the  surface. 
Sometimes  a  plane  dropped  the  device  to  detonate  in  the  air.  Or 
sometimes  a  balloon,  or  rocket,  lifted  the  device  to  a  desired 
altitude,  there  to  be  detonated. 

For  the  scientists  seeking  information  about  the  performance 
of  some  aspect  of  the  device,  there  were  trade-offs.  The  turnaround 
between  experiments  could  be  markedly  decreased  by  using  planes 
or  balloons,  but  it  was  not  possible  to  do  experiments  that  depended 
on  accurately  viewing  some  particular  area  of  the  the  device  where 
phenomena  of  interest  were  taking  place.  Towers  allowed  that,  but 
it  took  a  long  time  to  build  the  towers,  and  install  the  carefully 
collimated  and  aligned  pipes  through  which  instruments  viewed  a 
particular  area,  and  recorded  the  data  from  there. 

There  were  other  differences  among  the  ways  in  which  the 
experiments  were  done,  and  these  related  to  what  happened  to  the 
radioactive  material  that  was  produced  by  the  detonation.  It  was 
these  considerations  which  gradually  shaped  the  way  in  which 
experiments  could  be  carried  out,  and  eventually  led  to  the  firing  of 
all  devices  underground  in  such  a  way  that  no  radioactivity  entered 
the  atmosphere. 

Initially,  the  approach  to  the  radioactive  products  of  the  deto¬ 
nation  was  to  disperse  and  dilute  them,  hopefully  to  a  degree  that 
made  them  of  little  biological  consequence  to  people  who  might 
encounter  them.  It  was  an  application  of  a  belief  once  commonly 
held,  not  only  by  those  detonating  nuclear  devices  but  by  those 
running  factories  and  other  industrial  sites  which  produced  unpleas¬ 
ant  and  possibly  dangerous  by-products  of  the  materials  they  pro¬ 
duced: 

The  solution  to  pollution  is  dilution. 

With  this  approach,  if  you  were  dumping  waste  chemicals  into 
a  river,  and  the  river  became  badly  fouled,  what  you  needed  was  a 
bigger  river,  so  there  would  be  more  dilution.  The  concept  of 
controlling  by-products  of  an  activity  at  the  source  came  slowly, 
and  only  as  a  result  of  public  concerns. 


Origins 


9 


After  the  end  of  World  War  II  the  United  States  conducted 
nuclear  experiments  at  Bikini,  and  later  at  Enewetak  as  well.  There 
was  the  Crossroads  operation  at  Bikini  in  1946,  and  the  Sandstone 
operation  at  Enewetak  in  1948. 

Crossroads  consisted  of  two  21  kiloton  detonations;  one  air- 
burst  on  June  30,  and  an  underwater  detonation  on  July  24,  1946. 
These  were  weapons  effects  tests,  to  investigate  effects  of  a  nuclear 
detonation  on  ships  and  other  military  equipment.  In  Sandstone 
there  were  three  devices  of  various  yields  fired,  all  on  towers, 
between  April  14  and  May  14,  1948.  There  was  a  significant 
difference  from  the  focus  on  the  effects  of  the  Crossroads  detona¬ 
tions  -  -  information  about  the  performance  of  the  devices  them¬ 
selves  was  an  integral  part  of  the  Sandstone  operation. 

Crossroads  and  Sandstone  were  basically  ship-based  with  mini¬ 
mal  support  facilities  on  the  atolls  themselves.  By  1951,  when  the 
Greenhouse  operation  was  held  from  April  7  to  June  24,  1951, 
permanent  facilities  had  been  built  on  Enewetak. 

Bob  Campbell  became  one  of  the  Los  Alamos  Test  Directors, 
and  although  he  did  not  participate  in  either  Crossroads  or  Sand¬ 
stone,  he  later  had  extensive  experience  in  both  the  Pacific,  and  in 
Nevada,  starting  with  Operation  Ivy,  in  the  Pacific,  in  1952. 

Campbell:  Enewetak  was  first  used  in  '48,  for  Sandstone,  and 
the  whole  nine  yards  of  that  thing  was  done  by  the  Corps  of 
Engineers;  U.S.  Army  types.  And  there  were  a  number  of  lessons 
learned  on  that.  The  AEC  made  their  imprint  on  Greenhouse.  The 
operation  itself  was  in  '5  1 ,  but  there  was  well  over  a  year  and  a  half 
buildup.  They  had  a  big  structures  program,  and  all  the  housing, 
warehousing  -  -  essentially  everything  out  there  that  we  used  for 
Greenhouse  -  -  was  built  by  the  AEC.  They  did  a  much  better  job 
than  the  Corps  of  Engineers,  because  they  had  the  idea  that  they 
were  going  to  operate  these  things  for  ever  and  a  day.  It  wasn't 
going  to  be  done  in  the  style  of  a  Task  Force  campaign. 

You  can  go  back  and  look  at  the  testing.  The  reason  for  Trinity 
was  obvious;  to  see  if  the  thing  would  work  once.  Then  there  were 
the  Japanese  things.  Then  there  was  a  big  hue  and  cry  by  the  Navy, 
and  so  there  was  Crossroads.  That  was  a  Navy  show;  r"  this  Lab  did 
was  provide  the  detonation  service.  And  the  Navy  did  themselves 
proud  with  Crossroads. 


10 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Then  it  was  the  Army's  turn  with  Sandstone,  but  by  that  time 
the  Lab  had  an  interest  in  it  too,  because  they  had  some  new  designs 
to  try.  So,  it  was  more  or  less  a  joint  venture.  In  fact,  it  was  a  little 
more  than  a  joint  venture.  The  Army  really  acted  as  support  to  the 
Lab  on  Sandstone. 

The  Laboratory  group  who  did  those  operations  was  formed 
the  same  way  as  it  had  been  in  the  past.  You  take  somebody  from 
this  division,  somebody  from  that  division,  and  somebody  from  over 
here,  put  together  a  campaign,  and  go  do  it.  Everybody  comes  back 
and  then  goes  back  to  their  regular  jobs.  At  the  end  of  Sandstone, 
Darol  Froman,  who  had  been  the  senior  Lab  person  there,  realized 
that  wasn't  going  to  cut  it.  It  was  going  to  go  on  and  on,  and  so  in 
'49,  the  year  after  Sandstone,  they  formed  ]  Division,  a  permanent 
testing  division,  in  the  Laboratory. 

Froman  saw  the  need  of  it,  and  I've  seen  a  fair  amount  of  his 
correspondence  on  it.  He  wrote  some  rather  persuasive  papers  on 
why  it  would  be  better  if  they  faced  up  to  it  and  said,  "Here  it  is; 
we're  going  to  be  doing  this  for  the  rest  of  our  lives."  And  I  think 
the  AEC  was  right  in  listening  to  him,  and  going  along  with  a 
permanent  plant  at  Enewetak  atoll. 

Operations  in  the  Pacific,  at  what  was  called  the  Pacific 
Proving  Ground  (the  PPG),  were  expensive,  time  consuming,  and 
required  considerable  military  resources  to  support  the  operation, 
the  civilian  construction  workers  who  built  the  camps,  the  bunkers, 
and  the  towers,  and  the  scientific  teams  who  came  to  install  the 
devices  and  the  diagnostics.  The  construction  started  a  year  to  a 
year  and  a  half  before  the  actual  tests  began. 

Gerry  Johnson,  after  a  short  time  as  a  weapons  designer, 
became  responsible  for  the  Livermore  field  efforts,  and  then  be¬ 
came  one  of  the  Livermore  Test  Directors. 

Johnson:  Shooting  in  the  atmosphere  required  big  task  forces, 
and  as  a  consequence  we  could  not  have  continuous  operations. 
You  had  to  mobilize,  put  things  together,  shoot  them  all  in  an 
interval,  then  return  to  the  Laboratories  and  try  to  figure  out  what 
happened,  rework  the  designs,  and  design  new  experiments. 

In  addition  to  that,  the  operations  were  complicated,  unduly 
complicated,  because  there  were  thousands  of  people  in  the  field. 
They  were  spectacular  shows,  people  liked  to  see  them,  and  so  they 


Origins  1 1 

dreamed  up  all  sorts  of  reasons  for  being  there.  That  meant  if  you 
were  trying  to  manage  the  operations,  you  had  several  thousand 
people  to  tty  to  keep  track  of.  If  anything  went  wrong,  any 
confusion,  you  had  a  hell  of  a  time  getting  them  out  of  there,  and 
getting  it  straightened  out  so  you  could  do  your  work. 

After  Sandstone  there  were  no  more  shots  in  the  Pacific  for 
almost  three  years,  until  the  first  event  of  Greenhouse  on  April  7, 
1951.  In  the  meantime  there  was  an  exploration  for  a  possible 
location  in  the  United  States  where  low  yield  detonations  could  be 
carried  out,  without  the  cost  and  time  required  for  the  Pacific  tests. 

The  Korean  War  led  to  the  declaration  of  a  national  emergency 
by  President  Truman  on  December  16,  1950.  Two  days  after  that 
declaration  the  President  authorized  the  AEC  to  establish  a  proving 
ground  for  nuclear  tests  on  the  Las  Vegas-Tonopah  Test  Range. 
Various  locations  had  been  looked  at  during  the  1948-1949  period. 
Ultimately  a  choice  had  to  be  made. 

Brownlee:  The  Nevada  Test  Site  location  was  selected  by  Al 
Graves.  He  got  on  an  airplane  with  somebody,  they  flew  around, 
and  he  found  this  nice  area  .  You  could  put  some  boundaries  around 
it,  there  was  a  road  to  it  on  the  south  side,  and  it  looked  like  it  would 
be  easy  to  build  roads. 

So,  the  criteria  used  for  the  selection  of  the  Test  Site  had 
nothing  to  do  with  whether  there  would  be  atmospheric  or  under¬ 
ground  shots.  It  was  just  a  place  we  could  get  our  hands  on.  And 
it  was  a  place  that  had  a  road  to  it,  and  a  place  where  you  could  land 
airplanes;  it  was  an  accessible  place. 

And  there  is  another  thing.  When  Al  was  selecting  the  Site,  he 
was  selecting  a  place  where  Los  Alamos  could  go  to  do  interim  kinds 
of  things,  and  a  place  where  we  could  have  our  failures.  We  could 
have  a  failure  there,  because  if  it  didn't  work  we  could  come  back 
here,  and  in  a  few  days  have  another  thing  ready  to  try.  Once  we 
got  the  various  problems  worked  out,  then  we  would  go  to  the 
Pacific  to  do  the  real  experiment.  That  was  the  concept. 

So,  the  Nevada  Test  Site  was  selected  by  Los  Alamos  as  a  place 
where  you  could  do  certain  experiments  before  you  went  to  the 
Pacific  to  the  permanent  test  site  -  -  the  Pacific  Proving  Ground. 


12 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


When  we  removed  the  people  from  Enewetak,  in  the  Marshall 
Islands,  that  was  expected  to  be,  at  one  point  in  time,  permanent. 
We  didn't  anticipate  them  going  back. 

The  object  of  the  NTS  was  to  do  experiments  close  to  home  so 
you  could  go  over  to  the  Pacific  to  do  the  real  thing.  So,  you  did 
the  low  yield  here,  and  you'd  find  out  what  wouldn't  work.  When 
you  got  ready  to  do  one  that  really  worked,  you  went  to  the  Pacific. 
That  concept  was  believed,  and  held,  and  fostered  by  people  here 
at  Los  Alamos  for,  I  would  guess,  four  years.  That  was  a  long  time 
in  those  days.  And  then  we  realized  that  Nevada  was  good  enough 
that  we  could  do  a  lot  of  things  there  that  were  not  originally 
intended  to  be  done  there. 

With  the  approval  to  do  continental  testing,  things  moved 
rapidly.  The  Ranger  operation  consisted  of  five  airdrop  detonations 
which  were  done  in  eleven  days  from  January  27  to  February  6,  1951 
at  the  (then)  Nevada  Proving  Grounds.  There  were  two  devices  with 
a  yield  of  1  kiloton,  two  with  yields  of  8  kilotons,  and  one  of  22 
kilotons.  All  were  detonated  at  1000  feet  or  more  altitude. 

There  was  also  the  first  of  the  things  which  would  lead  to 
todays’s  world  of  “successful  containment.”  Fallout  from  one  of 
the  Ranger  events  left  measurable  amounts  of  radiation  in  Roches¬ 
ter,  New  York,  deposited  during  a  snowstorm. 

Of  course,  from  1951,  when  the  first  tests  were  done  at  the 
Nevada  Proving  Grounds,  until  1963,  there  was  no  Nuclear  Test  Ban 
Treaty,  and  from  1 95 1  until  1 96 1  there  were  no  requirements  for  any 
type  of  containment  in  the  conduct  of  a  test  at  the  (now)  Nevada  Test 
Site.  If  the  concept  of  containment  is  considered  in  a  broad  context, 
it  relates  fundamentally  to  a  way  to  mitigate  the  effects  of  the 
radioactivity  produced  during  a  nuclear  explosion.  These  effects 
can  be  quite  close  to  the  place  of  the  detonation,  they  can  take  place 
at  considerable  distances,  they  can  be  global  in  extent. 

Such  effects  began  to  be  a  problem  soon  after  tests  began  in 
Nevada.  By  1953,  in  the  operation  called  Upshot-Knothole,  air¬ 
drops  were  used  less  and  less,  and  devices  with  yields  up  to  32  kt 
(Harry),  and  43  kt  (Simon)  were  fired  on  towers.  Both  of  those 
events  caused  off  site  fallout  problems.  In  the  case  of  Simon,  some 
off  site  cars  were  contaminated,  and  had  to  be  washed  down.  In  the 
case  of  Harry,  the  people  of  St.  George,  Utah  were  told  to  stay 
indoors  from  nine  until  noon,  to  reduce  exposures  from  the  fallout 


Origins 


13 


on  the  community,  and  the  passage  of  the  radioactive  cloud.  There 
was  fallout  in  Troy,  New  York,  deposited  in  rain  which  fell.  There 
were  reports  (and  later  lawsuits)  that  hundreds  of  sheep  in  the  Nancy 
and  Harry  fallout  patterns  had  died,  presumably  due  to  exposure  to 
the  radioactive  products  of  those  events.  The  general  public  began 
to  be  aware  of  the  actuality  of,  and  the  hazards  associated  with,  the 
radioactive  material  from  the  nuclear  tests  at  the  NTS. 

Worldwide  attention  was  drawn  to  the  dangers  of  fallout  when 
the  15  megaton  Bravo  event  of  Operation  Castle  was  fired  on 
February  28,  1954.  A  Japanese  fishing  vessel,  the  Lucky  Dragon, 
was  some  80  miles  from  the  detonation,  and  was  in  the  fallout 
pattern.  By  the  time  it  returned  to  Japan  several  members  of  the 
crew  required  hospitalization  for  the  effects  of  the  exposures  they 
had  received,  and  one  died  during  treatment.  Some  236  Marshallese 
and  31  weather  service  personnel  who  were  on  downwind  atolls, 
well  removed  from  Enewetak  and  Bikini,  were  also  exposed,  as 
were  personnel  on  the  ships  of  the  Task  Force. 

Bill  Ross  was  a  participant  during  Castle,  responsible  for  the 
mechanical  hardware  that  was  to  be  used  for  Livermore  measure¬ 
ments  on  the  Los  Alamos  Bravo  event. 

Ross:  I  was  on  the  Curtis.  We  were  issued  the  glasses  the  night 
before,  told  to  wear  long  sleeved  shirts,  and  that  sort  of  thing.  We 
were  about  thirty-five  miles  away.  You  kind  of  wondered,  you 
know.  There'd  been  the  orderly  room  speculation  about  setting  the 
atmosphere  on  fire,  splitting  the  world  in  half  into  two  pieces,  and 
all  that.  And  you  began  to  wonder  whether  they  really  were 
seriously  talking  about  what  actually  might  happen. 

Of  course,  the  shot  point  was  below  the  horizon.  There  was 
this  tremendous  light  and  heat,  although  you  couldn't  feel  the  heat 
at  first.  There  was  just  the  tremendous  light.  Even  with  the  very 
dark  glasses  you  were  squinting.  And  then  the  heat  came  as  the 
fireball  got  above  the  horizon,  and  it  just  got  hotter,  and  hotter,  and 
hotter.  We  had  been  warned  to  hang  on  because  of  the  shock  wave. 
By  that  time  it  was  just  so  spectacular  I'd  forgotten  all  about  that 
warning,  and  1  was  just  standing  there.  All  of  a  sudden  it  looked  like 
a  gauze  curtain  coming  at  you,  smoothing  out  the  little  ripples  of  the 
water.  There  was  a  bang,  and  from  then  on  there  was  just  a  roar, 
a  tremendous  roaring  that  seemed  to  go  on  for  a  long  time.  Finally 


14 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


the  light  got  so  dim  that  you  were  opening  your  eyes  wide  and 
straining,  and  then  you  remembered,  oh,  I've  got  these  goggles  on. 
When  you  took  the  goggles  off  it  was  still  very  bright.  The  goggles 
were  a  darn  sight  darker  than  welding  goggles.  It  was  very 
impressive. 

We  started  to  get  into  the  fallout,  and  the  commanding  officer 
of  the  Curtis  got  out  from  under  the  fallout.  But,  the  Navy  didn't 
like  their  ships  ail  going  in  different  directions,  each  commanding 
officer  deciding  which  way  to  go,  so  they  were  all  told  to  regroup 
around  the  Estes,  where  the  task  force  commander  was,  which  was 
right  under  the  cloud,  so  they  ail  went  back  into  the  fallout.  We  just 
had  a  little  bit  of  fallout  and  got  out  from  under  it,  and  they  washed 
the  decks  down.  We  were  back  out  on  the  deck  again  when  they  got 
ordered  to  regroup.  We  went  back  in,  and  here  it  comes  down 
again.  Then  we  were  locked  in,  and  they  were  hosing  down. 

My  stateroom  was  right  near  where  the  swabbies  were  going 
out  on  the  deck  and  cleaning  up,  and  they  had  a  monitoring  station 
there.  These  guys  would  go  out  in  their  raincoats  and  boots,  and 
they  would  hose  and  sweep.  When  they  came  in  they  would  strip 
and  pile  the  stuff  on  the  floor,  step  over  two  feet,  and  a  guy  would 
go  over  them  with  a  counter.  It  was  into  the  showers  if  you  showed 
more  than  2  mR  above  background.  Ail  this  time  the  pile  of  clothing 
background  is  growing.  At  one  point  they  were  looking  for  the 
difference  between  100  and  102  mR  per  hour.  They  were  doing 
the  monitoring  in  a  100  mR  per  hour  field. 

I  don't  remember  how  long  we  had  to  stay  inside,  but  it  was 
many,  many  hours.  This  thing  went  off  at  five  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  and  we  didn't  get  fallout  coming  down  on  us  until  after  we 
had  eaten,  as  I  remember.  We  got  a  little  bit,  got  out  from  under 
it,  cleaned  up,  and  were  out  on  the  deck  around  nine  or  ten,  and 
then  it  was  back  in  again.  I  don't  remember  when  we  got  out.  Herb 
Weidner  and  some  of  the  other  guys  who  were  over  on  the  aircraft 
carrier  Bairoko,  they  were  in  a  high  field  for  days.  The  hanger  deck 
was  running,  if  I  remember,  a  number  of  hundred  mR  per  hour  for 
hours,  and  then  they  were  down  around  5  mR  per  hour  for  days 
afterwards.  They  got  a  lot  of  exposure.  In  fact,  the  Bairoko  never 
did  get  cleaned  up. 


Origins 


15 


I  didn't  see  the  fallout,  but  I  was  told  by  the  guys  who  were 
sweeping  it  up  and  hosing  it  off  that  it  was  like  a  white  dust.  It  was 
calcined  coral.  An  awful  lot  of  stuff  went  up,  and  it  falls  out,  it 
definitely  does.  If  you  read  the  story  of  the  Lucky  Dragon,  they  got 
caught  in  the  same  kind  of  mess. 

After  Bravo,  and  the  Lucky  Dragon,  fallout  was  no  longer  just 
a  local  concern,  or  a  U.S.  concern.  Prime  Minister  Nehru,  of  India, 
on  April  2,  1954  called  for  a  testing  moratorium.  Concerns  in  the 
United  States  led  to  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission  finally  to 
release  some  information  about  fallout.  Before  this  there  had  only 
been  releases  saying,  in  essence,  that  whatever  exposure  people  had 
received  from  the  fallout  from  detonations  at  the  Test  Site  were  not 
large  enough  to  cause  any  problems.  No  mention  was  made  of  the 
levels  of  possible  exposures,  of  what  radioactive  isotopes  were 
involved,  or  what  areas  were  in  the  overall  fallout  pattern.  It  was  on 
February  12,  1955  that  the  Commision  released  a  report  titled  “A 
Report  by  the  United  Stastes  Atomic  Energy  Commission  on  the 
Effects  of  High  Yield  Nuclear  Explsions”.  This  report  did  talk 
about  both  the  Bravo  test  and  the  fallout  from  Nevada  tests,  but  did 
little,  if  anything  to  reduce  the  concerns  of  the  public;  in  fact,  it  may 
have  exacerbated  them.  Commissioner  William  Libby  did  make  a 
public  statement  about  the  problems  of  radiation  exposure,  and 
released  scientific  data  about  fallout  in  a  talk  he  gave  in  June  of 
1955  to  the  alumni  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  wherein  he  made 
the  statement  that  fallout  did  not  “constitute  any  real  hazard  to  the 
immediate  health”  of  members  of  the  public. 

People  working  at  the  Test  Site  were  having  their  own  prob¬ 
lems  with  both  local  and  off-site  deposition  of  radioactive  material. 

Campbell:  After  the  St.  George  business,  and  after  Bravo,  it 
became  obvious  that  we  couldn't  continue  to  have  that  kind  of  off 
site  fallout.  If  we  wanted  to  get  our  job  done,  we  were  going  to  have 
to  find  different  ways  of  doing  things.  I  don'tthink  it  was  the  people 
in  Washington.  It  was  really  an  internal  recognition  that  we  had  to 
do  something.  And  on  site  it  was  our  people  who  were  getting 
exposed  making  the  recoveries.  Believe  me,  radiation  readings  in 
the  fallout  patterns  were  much  higher  in  Area  3  than  they  were  in 
Utah,  and  we  had  to  go  in  to  get  the  data.  The  rule  then  was  that 
you  could  work  people  forever  in  1 0  mr  per  hour  fields.  In  Nevada 


16 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


I  don't  believe  I  ever  went  into  a  field  that  was  over  50  R.  Fifty  R 
per  hour  is  a  lot,  but  you  could  get  people  who  had  not  had  much 
exposure,  and  you  could  say,  "The  operation  is  almost  over,  you  re 
going  home,  and  this  is  just  for  one  time." 

Operationally  a  number  of  things  were  tried,  with  the  idea 
being  to  protect  our  own  people.  In  so  doing  there  was,  of  course, 
a  benefit  off  site.  They  tried  making  large  blacktop  pads  around 
tower  bases,  asphalt  pads,  to  keep  from  entraining  so  much  dirt. 
You  could  keep  down  quite  a  bit  of  the  dirt  that  came  flying  up 
otherwise.  And  then  there  were  areas  where  boron  was  put  down, 
to  reduce  the  soil  activation.  That  was  in  about  '55,  or  even  before. 

Towers  we  bought  by  the  foot;  we'd  buy  pieces  for  several 
thousand  feet  of  towers.  Then  you  take  bits  and  pieces,  like  an 
erector  set,  and  put  up  a  two  hundred  foot,  or  three  hundred  foot 
tower.  We  had  towers  that  were  triangular  in  cross  section,  and 
towers  that  were  square  in  cross  section.  The  triangular  things 
twisted  too  easily  in  torsion,  and  wouldn't  bear  enough  load  either. 
There  was  always  the  business  of  Herman  Hoerlin  wanting  more 
lead,  or  Ernie  Krause  wanting  more  of  something  else  in  the  cab.  We 
tried  aluminum  towers  to  get  away  from  the  steel,  but  they  didn't 
work  worth  a  damn  Do  you  want  a  little  steel,  or  do  you  want  a  lot 
of  aluminum?  It  ended  up  that  the  aluminum  just  did  not  have  the 
strength  and  rigidity.  It  wasn't  too  popular,  so  we  were  always 
trying  to  find  ways  to  use  the  aluminum  towers  we  had  in  stock. 

By  1956  people  in  the  testing  community  were  beginning  to 
consider  seriously  the  possibilities  of  conducting  tests  underground. 
This  was  a  major  shift  in  the  thinking  about  the  problem  of  fallout. 
Previous  efforts  had  been  directed  basically  to  dispersal  and  dilu¬ 
tion;  firing  underground  would  be  an  attempt  to  control  at  the 
source,  to  keep  the  radioactive  material  in  one  place,  and  not  to  let 
it  disperse. 

Edward  Teller  and  Dave  Griggs  in  1956  wrote  a  brief  paper 
(UCRL-1659)  titled  “Deep  Underground  Test  Shots”.  In  it  they 
concluded: 

“1.  The  cost  of  drilling  a  hole  sufficiently  large  and  deep  to 
emplace  and  contain  kiloton  shots  is  comparable  to  the  cost 
of  erecting  a  tower  for  such  shots. 


16a 


(t* 


Typical  shot  tower.  Operation  Teapot,  1955. 


In  an  effort  to  reduce  fallout,  balloons  were  used  in  both  the  Plumbbob  test  series,  1957, 
and  the  Hardtack  II  test  series,  1958,  to  lift  test  devices  to  approximately  1,000 feet  for 
atmospheric  detonation.  Above  is  a  typical  example  from  the  Plumbbob  series. 


Origins 


17 


“2.  A  depth  of  3000  feet  is  ample  to  be  sure  of  no  surface 
eruption  from  30  kt  and  small-to-zero  emanation  of  volatile 
radioactive  elements.  One  thousand  feet  will  suffice  for  1 
kt. 

“3.  Yield  can  be  determined  within  5  to  10%  by  seismic  and 
time-of-shock  arrival,  with  suitable  calibration. 

“4.  Radiochemistry  of  the  explosion  products  may  be  done  by 
core  drilling  the  molten  sphere.  This  may  be  expensive. 

“5.  Diagnostic  experiments  may  have  to  be  restricted  to  the 
determination  of  the  time-dependent  gamma  flux. 

“6.  Using  an  open  hole,  visual  observation  and  interesting 
neutron  experiments  may  become  possible. 

“7.  The  seismic  hazard  to  off  site  structures  is  nil. 

“8.  The  long-term  radiologic  hazard  is  nil.” 

And,  they  recommended  that  in  connection  with  the  next 
Nevada  test  series,  (which  would  be  Plumbbob,  in  1 957)  a  low  yield 
shot  be  detonated  at  the  Test  Site  “at  such  a  depth  that  it  will  be 
contained.” 

At  Los  Alamos,  A1  Graves,  head  of  the  test  effort,  had  arrived 
at  the  same  conclusion;  the  possibility  of  doing  tests  underground 
had  to  be  explored,  because  nuclear  tests  were  going  to  have  to  be 
done  underground  if  testing  in  the  United  States,  at  the  Nevada  Test 
Site,  was  to  continue.  No  such  events  had  ever  been  conducted,  and 
the  state  of  ignorance  was  vast.  There  were  no  equations  of  state  for 
earth  materials,  and  no  codes  into  which  to  put  them  if  they  had 
existed,  and  by  today’s  standards,  primitive  computers  to  run  them 
on  if  the  codes  had  existed.  No  one  knew  how  big  a  cavity  would  be 
formed,  or  what  the  post-shot  cavity  conditions  would  be.  No  one 
knew  what  a  safe  burial  depth  was.  No  one  knew  what  the  ground 
motion  and  seismic  effects  would  be.  And  so  on. 

In  1956,  Graves  asked  Bob  Brownlee  to  look  into  what  might 
happen  if  a  device  were  detonated  underground. 

Brownlee:  One  reason  I  admired  A1  Graves  was  because  he  was 
so  inordinately  farsighted.  He  anticipated  problems  long  before 
other  people.  Where  he  came  to  have  these  ideas  I  have  no  idea; 
whether  they  came  from  his  colleagues,  or  whether  they  came  from 
the  sky  1  don't  know.  He  was  the  first  one  to  my  knowledge  to  ask 
questions  of  a  far-reaching  kind  about  the  hazards  of  testing.  For 
example,  "Is  there  any  chance  that  I  will  knock  a  piece  of  the  shelf 


18 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


off  the  reef,  which  will  then  slide  down  the  edge  of  the  atoll  and  start 
a  big  wave  of  some  kind?  What's  the  chance  of  doing  that?"  As 
people  talked  it  over,  they  decided  that  could  actually  happen,  and 
so  we  moved  some  shots.  But  those  kinds  of  unanswerable  questions 
were  frequently  asked  by  Al  first,  at  least  to  my  knowledge. 

One  experience  with  testing  in  Nevada  which  must  have 
influenced  him  mightily  was  that  in  '55  there  was  a  civil  defense  test 
where  they  sat  out  over  two  weeks  before  the  weather  was  right. 
They  were  very  carefully  watching  where  the  fallout  would  go,  and 
if  it  was  predicted  to  go  over  places  where  there  were  people  who 
couldn't  be  warned,  and  evacuated  if  need  be,  the  shot  was 
cancelled  for  that  day.  That  shot  was  scheduled  every  day,  and  then 
cancelled,  for  nineteen  days,  and  Al  was  the  one  making  those 
decisions.  Now,  there  were  a  lot  of  civil  defense  people,  and  press 
people,  and  others,  whose  hotel  reservations  were  running  out  and 
so  on,  and  they  were  very  impatient  with  all  this.  And  Al  was  taking 
that  pressure. 

He  said  to  me,  in  1956,  "There  isn't  any  doubt  about  it.  If 
testing  is  to  proceed,  we're  going  to  have  to  go  underground.  It's 
got  to  be  done,  whether  we  want  to  or  not.  Would  you  start  working 
on  what  it  might  be  like  to  have  a  fireball  underground?" 

I  was  tied  up  for  the  '56  tests  in  the  Pacific,  but  once  they  were 
over  Al  said  again,  "Please  go  to  work  on  underground  things.  It's 
inevitable.  We're  going  to  have  to  do  that,  and  the  question  is,  'Can 
you  contain  anything  at  all?  If  you  put  the  device  underground, 
does  it  just  all  blow  out,  or  what?"'  It  was  a  very  interesting 
question,  and  I  began  doing  some  machine  calculations.  We  were 
doing  work  on  the  IBM  704's,  which  were  quite  new  then. 

Carothers:  You  were  using,  by  today's  standards,  a  rather 
small  machine.  You  were  using  a  computer  that  had  less  capability 
than  the  one  you  probably  have  at  home  now. 

Brownlee:  Oh,  you  can  now  carry  around,  in  your  shirt  pocket, 
something  with  more  memory  than  the  704's  had.  We  coded 
everything  in  machine  language  in  order  to  save  memory.  And  we 
had  bits  in  the  words  which  we  used  as  flags,  because  you  never  did 
any  multiplication  or  division  until  the  end,  because  that  was  so 
slow.  The  programs  were  incredibly  sophisticated  in  adapting 
anything  in  the  world  to  a  little  bit  of  memory,  and  to  the  machine's 
characteristics.  You  spent  all  of  your  time  doing  that  rather  than 


Origins 


19 


working  on  the  problem.  I  had  this  big  deck  of  cards  that  1  would 
feed  into  the  machine,  and  if  there  was  a  card  upside  down  it  was 
rejected.  It  was  a  very  slow,  laborious  process,  but  that's  what  we 
had  in  '57. 

The  earliest  work  I  did  was  try  to  calculate  the  creation  of  a 
cavity.  I  had  the  equations  of  state  of  four  materials;  aluminum, 
uranium,  air,  and  water.  I  said,  "That's  the  old  Greek  concept  of 
earth,  air,  fire,  and  water.  Earth  was  aluminum,  fire  was  uranium, 
and  there  was  air,  and  water.  With  those  four  equations  of  state  I 
started  trying  to  calculate  what  might  happen  underground.  Now, 
very  quickly  we  began  to  get  more  refined  equations  of  state,  but 
from  those  four  I  tried  to  make  an  equation  of  state  for  some  fake 
material.  I  tried  to  guess  in  what  direction  earth  might  be  different 
from  aluminum,  and  started  to  change  the  various  parameters.  I 
finally  evolved  what  I  called  the  equation  of  state  of  NTS  dirt. 

I  look  back  on  it  all  now  in  amazement.  How  could  anybody 
pay  me  to  do  such  absolutely  worthless  calculations?  And  yet,  the 
fact  is,  they  weren't  all  that  bad.  1  created,  in  my  initial  calculations, 
an  elliptical  cavity;  I  didn't  really  get  a  round  cavity.  That  was 
because  of  the  inadequacies  of  my  equations  of  state.  Of  course, 

I  didn't  know  enough  to  know  what  the  answer  should  be,  so,  just 
like  every  other  theoretician,  I  fudged  the  numbers  to  make  them 
kind  of  match  what  I  saw.  By  modern  day  standards  it  was  an 
abomination,  but  for  the  time  it  wasn't  all  that  bad,  and  we  were 
educating  ourselves. 

Incidently,  I  feel  very  strongly  about  that.  Machine  calcula¬ 
tions  you  should  use  to  teach  you  how  to  think.  You  don't  pay  any 
attention  to  the  numbers,  but  they  teach  you  how  to  think,  and  how 
to  see  what  is  more  important  than  something  else.  And  that's 
exactly  what  I  was  doing.  I  was  getting  a  very  good  education.  I 
wasn't  contributing  anything  profound  to  the  system,  but  I  sure  was 
getting  a  education  about  how  to  think  about  things.  That's  the  real 
value  of  that  kind  of  work. 

So,  I  did  my  first  primitive  calculations  in  '56.  And  I  actually 
calculated  one  test,  Bernalillo,  which  we  did  in  '58.  That's  how  I 
got  into  the  underground  business,  and  that  was  strictly  due  to  Al 
Graves,  who  recognized  the  necessity  to  go  underground.  There  are 


20 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


a  lot  of  people  who  don't  realize  that  we  were  doing  the  initial  work 
for  underground  tests  as  early  as  1956.  Now,  remember,  we  didn't 
do  that  until  '63,  totally. 

One  theme  that  was  present  in  the  early  underground  experi¬ 
ments  was  that  there  was  a  definite  self-interest  for  the  Laboratories' 
test  organizations  in  reducing  the  fallout  from  the  shots.  There  was 
a  need  and  a  desire  to  reduce  the  fallout  off  site,  and  to  respond  to 
the  mounting  public  concerns,  but  also  there  was  the  need  to  reduce 
the  local  fallout  in  the  vicinity  of  the  shot  itself  for  operational 
reasons. 

Campbell:  The  first  thing  we  at  LASL  did  in  a  hole  was  called 
Pascal-A.  It  was  500  feet  deep,  in  a  cased  hole.  We  put  the  bomb 
in  the  bottom  of  it,  and  we  didn't  stem  it.  So,  we  fired  it.  Biggest 
damn  Roman  candle  I  ever  saw!  It  was  beautiful.  Big  blue  glow  in 
the  sky.  I  was  up  in  the  CP  office,  and  that  was  fired  from  a  little 
handset,  out  at  the  B-J  Y. 

Carothers:  You  mean  somebody  sat  out  there,  and  as  I've  seen 
in  Tom  Mix  movies,  pushed  the  plunger  to  blow  up  the  dynamite 
and  foil  the  Bad  Guys? 

Campbell:  Well,  pretty  close  to  that,  but  not  quite.  He  had 
a  little  hand  firing  set.  The  shot  was  in  Area  3,  down  by  3-300.  The 
firing  point  was  the  nearest  timing  station  of  any  size  to  Area  3,  and 
so  the  shot  was  between  the  people  out  there  and  the  CP. 

Bill  Ogle  was  out  there,  in  that  timing  station.  When  he  saw 
that  come  out  of  the  ground  he  knew  he  couldn't  come  south  the 
way  he  came  north,  because  he  was  going  to  get  into  trouble.  Bill 
was  more  excited  that  evening  than  I  ever  heard  him  before  or  since. 
He  was  really  excited  about  how  they  were  going  to  get  back.  They 
went  way  out  east  on  roads  that  didn't  exist,  came  back  around  into 
Yucca  Lake,  and  came  in  that  way.  You've  heard  people  say,  "His 
eyes  bulged  out  like  a  stomped-on  toad"?  That's  what  Ogle  looked 
like  when  he  came  into  the  ]  Division  office  that  night.  He  was  really 
excited,  and  talked  a  mile  a  minute.  They  were  damn  lucky  they 
didn't  go  right  through  that  cloud. 

Carothers:  Why  didn't  you  stem  it? 


Origins 


21 


Campbell:  Didn't  need  to.  We  did  have  a  lid  on  the  hole. 
Nobody's  seen  that  since.  We  never  did  find  that.  On  that  lid  was 
one  of  Johnny  Malik's  detectors,  and  we  wanted  a  line  of  sight  to 
see  if  we  could  measure  some  of  the  reactions.  There  was  a  kind  of 
plug  in  the  hole.  It  was  a  couple  of  hundred  feet  off  the  bottom, 
as  I  remember.  All  it  was,  was  a  concrete  cylinder  with  a  hole 
through  the  center  of  it,  so  the  detector  could  look  through.  And 
it  had  an  annulus,  so  it  wouldn't  bind  anywhere  going  down.  It  was 
suspended  from  the  harness  that  was  holding  the  bomb.  It  was  a 
collimator,  not  a  plug  that  was  supposed  to  stem  the  hole.  We  never 
found  that  collimator  either,  and  it  was  about  five  feet  thick. 

We  had  a  half  dozen  of  those  holes  drilled  in  an  arc  around 
station  3-300,  our  alpha  station.  We  were  in  the  business  of  making 
the  transition  from  towers  that  were  looked  at  from  the  station.  All 
our  scopes  were  in  there,  and  we  were  trying  to  get  something  where 
we  could  use  the  same  recording  gear  without  having  to  move  it. 

But  anyhow,  bad  as  it  was,  spectacular  as  it  was,  there  was  only 
about  a  tenth  of  the  radiation  on  the  ground  around  there  that  there 
would  have  been  if  we  had  done  it  on  the  surface.  And  we 
considered  a  factor  of  ten  reduction  to  be  wonderful.  We  thought 
we  had  made  a  real  gain.  A  factor  of  ten  meant  we  could  get  back, 
and  get  set  up  and  fire  again  more  quickly.  We  were  very  happy  with 
the  results,  and  we  did  it  all  over  again  on  Pascal-B.  That  one  doesn't 
stick  in  my  mind  like  that  first  blue  one.  That  was  our  initiation. 

The  reduction  in  off  site  fallout  was  an  effect  that  was  appre¬ 
ciated  by  the  AEC,  and  the  people  who  worried  about  offsite  safety. 
What  we  were  worried  about  was  being  put  out  of  business  if  we  had 
too  many  people  pounding  on  the  gates.  And,  we  wanted  to  reduce 
the  local  fallout,  the  contamination  of  the  area  that  we  were  using. 

Jumping  ahead  to  the  moratorium,  it  turned  out  that  we  had 
a  little  money,  and  we  drilled  holes  against  the  day  that  we  might 
come  out  of  the  moratorium.  We  really  thought  that  was  the 
direction  we  were  going  to  go. 

Bob  Brownlee,  who  had  been  asked  to  look  at  the  possibility  of 
firing  shots  underground,  helped  to  design  the  Pascal  experiments, 
and  attempted  to  approach  the  problem  in  an  orderly  fashion.  That 
was  sometimes  difficult. 


22 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Brownlee:  Our  first  underground  tests  were  done  in  '57. 
There  was  Pascal-A,  and  Pascai-B,  and  Pascal-C.  And  there  were 
several  others  in  '58,  during  Hardtack  li.  A!  asked  the  following 
question,  "If  I  take  a  48  inch  casing,  and  1  put  a  bomb  a  couple  of 
hundred  feet  down,  by  how  much  will  the  fallout  be  reduced?"  We 
discovered  it  was  a  factor  greater  than  ten.  And  that  was  just  an 
open  hole.  So,  he  then  said,  "If  we  put  some  plugs  in  the  hole,  does 
that  cut  it  even  further?  And  if  so,  how  much?"  So  we  did  that. 
Then  he  said,  "Let's  put  a  plug  right  down  on  top  of  the  bomb,  and 
then  let's  put  a  plug  half  way  down.  Does  that  make  any  differ¬ 
ence?"  And  yes,  it  does  a  better  job  if  you  put  the  plug  right  on  top 
of  the  bomb.  "Well,  suppose  we  put  in  some  dirt.  Does  that  help?" 

We  started  exactly  that  way.  We  were  still  doing  atmospheric 
shots,  so  the  question  was  a  very  simple  one.  "If  you  do  this,  or  that, 
how  much  will  you  cut  the  fallout?"  And  we  determined  that 
experimentally.  The  answer  to  the  fallout  question  was,  "We'll 
measure  it  and  see."  On  the  other  hand,  the  calculations  I  did 
calculated  the  time  the  shock  would  get  to  the  top,  what  kind  of  top 
you  might  put  on  the  hole  to  hold  things  in,  what  would  the 
pressures  be  there,  how  big  might  the  cavity  get,  how  does  it  cool, 
and  what  happens  to  all  that  pressure?  Does  it  lift  the  ground? 
Those  kinds  of  questions. 

Pascal-B  and  Pascai-C  had  plugs,  but  Pascal-A  did  not,  although 
it  had  a  concrete  collimator  in  it  for  the  detector  at  the  surface.  The 
guys  had  been  working  trying  to  get  it  ready,  and  there  had  been  a 
number  of  troubles.  They  finally  got  it  down  hole,  by  my  recollec¬ 
tion,  about  ten  o'clock  or  so  at  night.  There  wasn't  much  time  to 
go  back  into  Mercury,  go  to  bed,  and  get  up  the  next  morning  to 
shoot  it,  so  somebody  said,  "Why  don't  we  just  shoot  it  now,  and 
then  go  in?"  And  it  was  the  world's  finest  Roman  candle,  because 
at  night  it  was  ail  visible.  Blue  fire  shot  hundreds  of  feet  in  the  air. 
Everybody  was  down  in  the  area,  and  they  all  jumped  in  their  cars 
and  drove  like  crazy,  not  even  counting  who  was  there  and  who 
came  out  of  the  area.  Today  it  would  give  the  Test  Controller  and 
his  Panel  total  apoplexy  -  -  they  would  become  totally  insensate. 

It  wasn't  done  quite  as  logically  as  I  have  indicated,  but  there 
was  a  thread  of  logic  from  shot  to  shot.  We  saw  what  happened  on 
one,  and  decided  what  to  do  next,  but  in  the  meantime  we  would 
have  another  one.  So,  the  chronology  is  not  as  perfect  as  you'd  like 
to  think  it  was. 


Origins 


23 


One  of  the  things  we  were  annoyed  about  in  '57  and  '58  -  - 
I  remember  being  annoyed,  and  I  say  we  because  I  think  there  were 
a  number  of  us  -  -  was  that  we'd  do  an  underground  shot,  and  the 
radioactivity  from  an  atmospheric  test  would  be  floating  by  at  such 
high  levels  we'd  never  know  what  came  out.  The  object  of  the 
underground  shot  was  to  see  how  much  we  could  reduce  the  fallout, 
but  we  couldn't  differentiate  that  fallout  from  the  fallout  of  the 
atmospheric  shot,  which  was  so  much  greater.  So,  I  thought,  "Why 
in  thunder  are  we  doing  this?  The  whole  object  is  to  find  out  what 
happened  on  this  underground  shot,  and  after  it's  over  we  don't 
know  whether  it  leaked  or  not,  or  how  much.  This  is  absurd.  Why 
don't  those  guys  knock  it  off?"  I  remember  having  that  kind  of  an 
attitude,  and  I  think  there  were  several  of  us  that  were  annoyed.  But 
the  right  hand  usually  doesn't  know  what  the  left  hand  is  doing,  and 
all  that. 

At  the  Livermore  Laboratory,  stimulated  by  the  Teller  and 
Griggs  report,  work  was  being  done  to  fire  a  low  yield  device  in  a 
tunnel,  with  the  object  of  completely  containing  all  the  debris 
produced.  Gerry  Johnson  was  in  charge  of  the  Livermore  testing 
program,  and  was  the  Livermore  Test  Director. 

Johnson:  It  was  becoming  increasingly  difficult  to  carry  out 
tests  in  Nevada  because  of  the  fallout  constraints,  and  the  public 
furor  over  the  fallout.  There  was  a  rising  public  concern  that  kept 
growing  through  those  years.  In  Nevada,  from  an  operator's  point 
of  view,  we  were  only  interested  in  getting  the  developmental 
information.  Actually,  1956  was  when  we  began  to  think  about 
underground  shots,  and  we  were  interested  from  an  operational 
point  of  view.  We  felt  if  we  could  go  underground  and  get  the  data, 
then  we  could  treat  it  as  an  extensipn  of  the  Laboratory.  We'd  go 
out  and  shoot  whenever  we  were  ready  to  shoot,  without  this  big 
Task  Force  and  large  numbers  of  people,  because  as  you  know, 
underground  shots  are  pretty  dull  to  look  at.  And  the  duller  the 
better. 

Carothers:  Somebody  said,  "Watching  an  underground  shot  is 
like  watching  a  submarine  race." 


24 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Johnson:  I've  never  heard  that,  but  you're  right.  That's  a  good 
way  to  put  it.  One  of  the  big  questions  we  had  was  how  to  seal  the 
tunnel,  but  out  of  a  lot  of  stewing  around  the  Rainier  experiment  was 
finally  designed,  and  we  fired  it  in  September  of  '57.  And  it  did 
contain. 

The  Rainier  event  was  fired  in  B-tunnel  on  September  19, 
1957.  Even  by  today’s  definitions,  Rainier  was  successfully  con¬ 
tained.  The  dragon  was  caged,  and  his  foul  breath  no  longer 
polluted  the  air.  Considering  the  lack  of  knowledge  at  that  time 
about  the  phenomenology  of  an  underground  detonation,  that  fact  is 
somewhat  remarkable.  After  Rainier,  perhaps  containment  even 
seemed  easy. 

hubris:  n.  Excessive  pride,  arrogance.  From  the  Greek. 

Meanwhile,  two  different  paths  were  leading  to  changes  in  the 
way  in  which  nuclear  tests  were  conducted.  Since  the  Bravo  fallout 
problems,  opposition  to  continued  testing  had  been  increasing  in  the 
United  States,  with  wide  publicity  given  to  the  anti-testing  or  anti¬ 
bomb  views  of  Linus  Pauling,  Albert  Schweitzer,  Paul  Jacobs,  and 
others.  There  were  anti-bomb  demonstrations  in  England,  West 
Germany,  and  Japan.  Politically,  the  issue  of  testing  arose  during 
the  1956  presidential  campaign,  and  influenced  the  steps  that  were 
being  taken  to  negotiate  a  disarmament  treaty  with  the  Soviet 
Union.  In  August  of  1958  President  Eisenhower  announced  that 
United  States  would  suspend  testing  for  a  year  once  test  ban 
negotiations  were  begun  on  November  1,  1958,  in  Geneva. 

The  Hardtack  operation  had  been  conducted  at  the  PPG  from 
April  to  the  middle  of  August  in  1958.  With  the  announcement  of 
a  moratorium  to  begin  at  the  end  of  October,  Hardtack  Phase  II 
began  some  thirty  days  after  the  last  shot  in  the  Pacific. 

During  Hardtack  Phase  II  Los  Alamos  conducted  six  safety 
shots  in  unstemmed  holes,  with  yields  ranging  from  zero  to  a  few 
tens  of  tons.  These  events  in  unstemmed  holes  were  not  designed  to 
be  completely  contained;  the  objective  was  still  to  reduce  contami¬ 
nation  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  ground  zero,  and  to  experi¬ 
ment  with  various  plug  and  stemming  locations  and  configurations. 

Livermore  did  seven  tunnel  events  during  this  period.  There 
was  one  tunnel  event  which  introduced  those  people  interested  in 
containment  to  the  possibility  of  an  unexpectedly  high  yield,  or  as 


■a 


September  12,  1958,  Otero  event,  unstemmed  hole. 


September  12,  1958,  Otero  event,  unstemmed  hole. 


24b 


Surface  structure  for  Otero  event. 


Origins  25 

some  people  might  say,  the  unreliability  of  designers.  Neptune  was 
fired  on  October  14,  1958,  as  a  safety  experiment  with  an  expected 
yield  of  zero,  but  with  a  possible  yield  of  1 0  tons  or  so.  It  was  fired 
in  a  tunnel,  with  a  working  point  that  was  under  the  sloping  face  of 
the  mesa,  with  a  vertical  distance  of  1 10  feet  to  the  surface,  and  a 
slant  range  of  1 00  feet  to  the  closest  point  of  the  mesa.  The  yield  of 
1 16  tons  was  unexpected,  the  shot  vented,  and  produced  a  crater. 
The  fact  that  some  of  the  radioactivity  was  released  was  not  of  real 
concern;  Hardtack  II  was,  after  all,  principally  a  series  of  atmo¬ 
spheric  shots,  and  the  day  before  Neptune  the  Lea  event,  with  a  1 .4 
kt  device  suspended  from  a  balloon,  had  been  fired.  The  Livermore 
people,  showing  considerable  flexibility  in  their  thinking,  promptly 
called  Neptune  a  nuclear  cratering  experiment,  and  in  a  future  report 
(UCRL-5766  The  Neptune  Event;  A  Nuclear  Cratering  Experi¬ 
ment)  discussed  the  “major  contributions  of  the  data  to  the  theory 
and  prediction  of  cratering  phenomenology.” 

Carothers:  In  '58  Livermore  fired  a  shot,  called  Neptune,  in 
a  tunnel.  It  turned  out  that  it  gave  somewhat  more  yield  than  was 
expected,  and  it  vented  out  the  side  of  the  mountain.  People  have 
said  to  me,  "That  Gerry  Johnson,  he  was  probably  the  world's 
foremost  optimist.  We  don't  know  how  he  did  it,  but  he  could  take 
a  disaster  and  convince  everybody  it  was  a  great  success.  On 
Neptune  he  just  didn't  pay  any  attention  to  the  idea  that  shot  was 
supposed  to  be  contained.  He  said,  'Well,  that's  our  first  nuclear 
cratering  experiment.'" 

Is  that  a  true  story? 

Johnson:  Yes,  that's  correct.  I  was  told  the  maximum  possible 
yield  was  ten  tons.  That  was  the  absolute  tops.  So  we  designed  it 
for  ten  tons,  and  it  went  a  hundred  or  so. 

It  was  a  lousy  cratering  experiment.  It  was  on  a  sloping  hill,  but 
it  was  a  point  on  the  curve.  But  you're  right  -  -  you'll  find  that  listed 
with  the  cratering  shots  in  the  Plowshare  program,  and  it  had  lots 
of  analyses  done  on  it. 

Gary  Higgins,  at  Livermore,  was  beginning  to  explore  the 
possibility  of  collecting  what  were  called  prompt  radchem  samples. 
The  thought  was  that  if  some  kind  of  pipe  could  be  designed  that 
would  be  emplaced  in  such  a  way  as  to  look  directly  at  the  device, 
allow  a  flow  of  some  very  small  fraction,  but  no  more,  of  the  device 


26 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


debris  to  a  collector  on  the  surface,  the  expense  and  time  delay  of  the 
post-shot  drilling  for  samples  of  the  device  debris  could  be  avoided. 
Dick  Heckman  was  part  of  the  group  that  was  to  field  and  collect  the 
samples  which  might  be  obtained. 

Heckman:  We  started  off  with  a  few  of  the  safety  shots.  The 
one  incident  that  I  remember  in  particular  was  the  Neptune  event, 
in  Hardtack  Phase  II.  There  was  about  a  one-inch  diameter  pipe 
which  ran  down  into  the  roof  of  the  room.  The  hole  was  drilled 
vertically,  preshot,  and  this  one-inch  pipe  was  inserted  and  grouted 
into  place.  We  had  a  plywood  box  built  on  top  with  a  two  foot  by 
two  foot  aircraft-type  filter  material  with  the  appropriate  screen, 
and  with  just  a  discharge  on  up.  With  the  yield  that  was  anticipated, 
everything  should  really  be  kind  of  nice  after  the  shot. 

We  then  backed  off  down  to  the  Area  1 2  CP.  I  requisitioned 
a  pair  of  binoculars,  and  braced  myself  on  my  vehicle  so  I  could  spot 
in  on  the  location.  With  binoculars  I  could  see  the  little  sampling 
box,  and  since  our  success  hadn't  been  ail  that  good  on  safety  shots, 
I  thought  if  something  were  to  happen,  maybe  I  could  follow  the 
trajectory  of  the  box  so  I'd  know  where  to  go  and  find  it.  The  event 
went  off,  and  the  yield  was  quite  a  bit  higher  than  they  expected. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  that  was  one  of  the  first  cratering  shots  that  the 
Plowshare  program  takes  credit  for.  The  binoculars  did  no  good, 
because  the  ground  shock  hit  the  surface,  raised  a  dust  cloud,  and 
I  couldn't  see  a  thing. 

I  got  a  bunch  of  radiochemists,  and  we  went  up  and  we  saw  the 
the  filter  box  was  there,  in  the  crater.  I  argued  like  a  Dutch  uncle, 
and  got  permission,  which  in  retrospect  was  a  dumb  thing  to  do,  but 
I  got  permission  to  get  a  rope  tied  around  myself,  and  to  be  let  down 
into  the  crater.  We  were  pretty  motivated  in  those  days. 

So  I  crawled  down,  and  indeed  found  the  filter  box.  I  tore  the 
filter  paper  out,  but  the  pipe  had  shut  off  and  so  we  had  no  sample. 
Now,  when  I  was  given  permission  to  go  down  into  this  crater,  it 
was,  "Under  no  circumstances  will  you  go  into  a  field  which  is 
greater  than  1  R  per  hour,"  because  they  expected  this  big  fallout. 

Well,  going  down  there  with  my  survey  meter,  I  found  out  that 
the  activity  was  incredibly  low  -  -  a  few  tens  of  mR  per  hour,  in 
hindsight,  as  a  result  of  attempting  to  do  that  recovery,  we  got  some 
very  important  information  that  really  excited  some  of  the  Plow¬ 
share  people.  When  I  came  back  and  reported  this,  Vay  Shelton  and 


Origins 


27 


Gerry  Johnson  happened  to  be  down  there  at  the  time,  and  their 
eyes  lit  up.  It  was  sort  of,  "You've  made  the  discovery,  clearly  you 
would  want  to  publish  the  paper."  At  this  point,  the  sampling 
system  didn't  work,  so  as  far  as  I  was  concerned  there  were  other 
things  to  worry  about.  But  it  was  my  crew  in  that  recovery  who  were 
the  first  ones  to  discover  that  it  was  possible  to  do  a  cratering  shot 
and  trap  the  gross  radioactivity  down  in  the  ground.  Remember  that 
all  the  previous  experience  had  been  with  military  cratering  shots, 
which  were  underburied. 

Two  of  the  tunnel  events  in  the  Hardtack  II  operation  were 
designed  to  give  appreciable  yield.  Logan,  fired  two  days  after 
Neptune,  produced  about  five  kilotons,  and  was  successfully  con¬ 
tained.  Blanca,  fired  on  October  30,  1 958  produced  22  kilotons,  and 
like  Neptune,  but  in  a  more  spectacular  fashion,  vented  out  the  face 
of  the  mesa. 

The  Logan  event  was  interesting  for  several  reasons.  It  was  an 
event  in  a  tunnel,  designed  to  investigate  the  effects  of  the  nuclear 
radiation  on  various  materials.  There  was  a  horizontal  vacuum  line- 
of-sight  pipe  which  extended  for  1  50  feet  from  the  device,  opening 
to  two  feet  in  diameter  at  the  far  end.  From  there  two  six-inch 
diameter  pipes  extended  another  75  feet.  The  design  team  started 
with  some  money,  with  very  little  Laboratory  manpower  support 
available  due  to  the  heavy  shot  schedule  already  planned,  support 
from  some  contractors,  a  pad  of  blank  paper,  a  tunnel  that  was  still 
being  dug,  and  six  weeks  to  design  the  experiments  and  the  diagnos¬ 
tics,  fabricate  the  hardware,  and  have  everything  installed  for  the 
shot.  That  is  an  incredibly  short  time  scale  by  today’s  standards. 
And,  Logan  was  successfully  contained.  Arnold  Clark  was  the 
project  physicist  for  Logan. 

Clark:  We  had  six  weeks,  because  we  had  to  shoot  two  weeks 
before  the  end  of  October.  We  were  going  to  shoot  in  a  tunnel, 
which  hadn't  been  finished  being  dug  yet,  where  an  important  shot, 
Blanca,  was  going  to  be  shot  in  another  part.  So,  they  had  to  have 
two  more  weeks  after  we  shot  to  finish  off  the  cabling  for  Blanca. 
They  would  finish  digging  out  a  side  drift  place  for  us,  and  they'd 
pull  cable  for  us.  Our  biggest  problem  was  that  we  wanted  a  vacuum 
pipe  in  the  tunnel.  Here  we  were,  starting  with  a  blank  piece  of 
paper,  and  we  had  five  weeks  to  have  that  pipe  finished,  installed, 
and  pumped  down. 


28 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


They  said,  "How  long  do  you  want  it?"  We  looked  at  our  blank 
piece  of  paper,  and  said,  "A  hundred  and  fifty  feet."  "How  big 
around?"  "Oh,  about  this  big,"  making  a  cirle  with  our  arms.  And 
that  was  the  process  we  went  through  to  specify  it.  So,  we  had  a  150 

foot  vacuum  pipe,  maximum  diameter  of  two  feet,  made  by  NRL  in 
Washington.  It  was  flown  out,  installed,  and  evacuated.  And  it  held 
a  vacuum  !  In  five  weeks  ! 

Lockheed  made  a  very  fancy,  very  strong  steel  sample  holder 
to  put  at  the  1  50  foot  station.  Then  people  had  second  thoughts 
about  that  station,  and  said,  "That  is  not  going  to  survive.  Or  maybe 
it's  not  going  to  survive."  They  didn't  know.  "Maybe  we  better  go 
out  farther."  So,  we  extended  the  pipe  by  adding  two  pipes,  6 
inches  in  diameter,  to  the  back  end  of  the  big  one,  to  go  out  another 
75  feet.  And  that's  all  that  survived;  the  225  foot  stuff.  We  never 
saw  any  of  that  1  50  foot  station  after  the  shot.  That  was  where  the 
container  of  very  special  steel,  made  by  Lockheed,  had  been.  It  was 
a  huge  thing,  about  the  size  of  a  really  good-sized  safe,  just 
essentially  solid  steel.  And  it  was  a  very  special  steel  alloy  that  was 
supposed  to  survive.  Well,  it  didn't.  There  was  very  little  from  that 
station. 

We  had  a  quite  elaborate  closure  on  the  front  end.  There  was 
a  very  fine  theoretical  physicist,  Harold  Hall,  working  for  Montgom¬ 
ery  Johnson  in  early  '58.  They  were  worrying  about  this  containment 
problem,  and  Harold  came  up  with  the  idea  of  a  Box  A  type  closure, 
as  they  call  it  now.  This  was  a  brand  new  idea.  Harold  Hall  did  some 
calculations,  and  so  did  Montgomery  Johnson,  and  they  said,  "Ah, 
yes  I"  So  a  Box  A  type  closure  was  used  for  the  first  time  on  Logan, 
and  it  worked  very  well.  I  think  the  front  end  was  a  foot  in  diameter, 
which  is  pretty  big.  Maybe  it  was  ten  inches. 

When  they  were  digging  back  after  the  shot  they  also  drilled 
back  at  different  areas  around  the  zero  room,  and  found  that  the 
really  highly  radioactive  area,  I  guess  you  would  call  it  the  cavity 
today,  was  pear  shaped.  It  wasn't  circular.  Some  activity  had  come 
down  the  tunnel,  but  not  very  far  except  for  a  few  cracks  that  went 
out  as  much  as  1  50  feet.  So,  it  did  contain  completely. 

However,  it  knocked  in  the  side  of  the  drift  where  Blanca  was 
supposed  to  be,  and  there  wasn't  time  to  clean  out  that  drift,  so 
instead  of  being  shot  underneath  the  mesa  where  it  was  supposed  to 
be,  Blanca  was  shot  beneath  the  very  steep  face  of  the  mesa,  out 


Origins  29 

where  the  overburden  was  maybe  half  of  what  it  would  have  been. 
1  watched  it,  and  I  thought  the  side  of  the  mountain  was  going  to 
come  right  towards  me  and  hit  me.  I  was  only  two  miles  away. 

The  days  of  unrestricted  atmoshperic  testing  at  the  Nevada 
Test  Site  came  to  an  end  on  October  31,  1958,  at  midnight.  As 
midnight  came  and  went  ^  Livermore  device,  ready  to  be  fired,  hung 
suspended  from  a  balloon,  and  there  it  remained  until  the  balloon 
was  brought  down  and  the  device  removed. 

Duane  Sewell,  who  later  became  the  Deputy  Director  of  the 
Livermore  Laboratory,  was  the  Scientific  Adviser  to  the  Operations 
Manager  for  Hardtack  Phase  II,  and  made  the  recommendation  not 
to  fire. 

Sewell:  We  left  one  device  unfired,  and  1  remember  that  night 
very  well.  1  had  about  fifteen  hundred  people  who  really  were  upset 
with  me  because  I  didn't  tell  the  AEC  to  go  ahead  and  fire  that 
device.  I  told  them  not  to  fire  it,  because  it  was  obvious  we  were 
going  to  have  trouble,  but  not  from  fallout.  The  wind  pattern  was 
in  a  direction  that  was  not  going  to  give  us  trouble,  and  that  last  shot 
was  a  balloon  shot,  so  there  was  not  going  to  be  a  great  deal  of  dirt 
picked  up,  and  local  fallout  from  that.  But  the  wind  pattern  was  such 
that  there  was  a  potential  for  a  pressure  impulse  into  Las  Vegas  that 
was  strong  enough  to  possibly  break  plate  glass  windows.  We 
obviously  didn't  want  to  hurt  anybody,  and  didn't  want  to  break 
windows  either. 

We  were  testing  with  shots  of  a  half  ton  of  high  explosive 
mounted  on  one  of  the  hills  a  short  distance  from  the  CP.  We'd  fired 
a  number  of  those  during  the  evening,  and  it  was  a  double  bounce. 
The  shock  wave  bounced  down  around  Indian  Springs,  then  the  next 
bounce  was  into  Las  Vegas,  and  it  was  rather  sharply  focused.  We 
had  trouble  getting  enough  high  explosive;  I  was  blowing  up  all  the 
high  explosives  on  the  site  to  make  those  measurements  every  half 
hourto  forty-five  minutes.  The  scheduled  deadline  was  midnighton 
October  3  1  st,  Halloween  night.  I  remember  a  lot  of  masks  around 
the  place. 

Dodd  Starbird  was  the  Director  of  Military  Applications  at  the 
time  that  operation  was  going  on.  I  got  on  the  phone  with  him,  and 
I  said,  "That's  midnight  Washington  time,  not  Greenwich  time  when 


30 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


we  start  the  moratorium."  We  agreed  on  that.  That  gave  us  an  extra 
five  or  six  hours.  When  it  got  to  that  point  I  said,  "No,  it's  really 
midnight  here,"  and  1  got  him  to  agree  to  that.  Then  I  tried  to  get 
him  to  agree  to  midnight  within  the  United  States,  which  would 
mean  Hawaii,  but  he  wouldn't  buy  that.  He  wouldn't  go  that  far, 
so  Pacific  Standard  Time  was  what  we  finally  had  to  go  on. 

We  fired  the  last  HE  shot  about  eleven-thirty  that  night.  I  was 
in  the  microbarograph  room,  and  we  had  people  out  in  the  field  with 
mobile  measuring  systems.  The  people  there  called  in  and  said,  "My 
God,  what  did  you  fire  that  time?"  It  really  shook  them.  Appar¬ 
ently  we  had  them  just  at  the  focus,  and  I  thought,  "Boy,  if  a  half 
a  ton  can  be  heard  that  far,  I'm  not  going  to  fire."  The  last  thing 
we  wanted  was  to  have  any  sort  of  damage,  or  the  potential  of 
harming  people  in  Las  Vegas.  That's  why  I  made  the  decision  1  did. 
I  advised  Jim  Reeves  not  to  fire  and  he  went  along  with  it.  That's 
why  we  left  that  thing  hanging  on  the  balloon  that  night. 

Louis  Wouters  was  one  of  the  Livermore  scientists  waiting  for 
the  shot  to  be  fired. 

Wouters:  We  ended  up  with  one  shot,  Adams,  being  The  Last, 
the  last  of  that  particular  series.  It  was  going  to  be  shot  on  October 
3 1  st,  but  something  didn't  go  the  right  way,  and  we  didn't  fire  the 
shot.  If  the  politicians  had  any  sense  at  all  they  would  have  let  us 
shoot  it,  because  it  turned  out  that  two  days  later  the  Soviets  went 
ahead  and  fired  one  more  shot  anyway,  after  the  beginning  of  the 
moratorium.  They  weren't  as  picky  about  those  things  as  we  were. 


31 


2 


The  Rainier  Event 

The  first  nuclear  detonation  that  was  designed  to  be  completely 
contained  was  the  Rainier  event,  fired  in  B-tunnel  in  Rainier  Mesa 
on  September  19,1957,  during  the  Plumbbob  operation.  It  had  a 
yield  of  1.7  kilotons,  and  for  the  first  time  there  was  a  nuclear 
detonation  that  did  not  release  radioactive  material  into  the  atmo¬ 
sphere. 

During  the  test  moratorium  that  started  in  1958  there  were 
extensive  explorations  of  the  cavity  region  and  the  surrounding 
materials.  It  was  from  the  information  obtained  during  these 
reentry  operations  that  many  of  the  early  ideas  of  cavity  formation, 
growth,  size,  and  so  forth  originated. 

Gerry  Johnson  was,  at  that  time,  the  Test  Director  for  Livermore 
events,  and  was  the  person  who  caused  the  Rainier  detonation  to 
take  place. 

Johnson:  The  operational  constraints,  which  were  increasing 
each  year,  were  bugging  us,  and  we  were  looking  for  a  way  out. 
Then  Teller  and  Griggs  did  some  back  of  the  envelope  calculations 
and  said,  "Look,  it  ought  to  be  possible  to  shoot  a  shot  under¬ 
ground,  and  if  you  had  a  thousand  feet  of  overburden,  you  probably 
could  shoot  a  few  kilotons  or  so."  I  was  interested  in  that,  and  1  said, 
"Well,  we'II  examine  that.  We'll  get  some  people  looking  at  it  and 
thinking  about  it,  and  see  what  comes  out  of  it."  Which  we  did. 

That  was  in  '57.  The  Teller  and  Griggs  suggestion  was  about 
a  year  previous.  They  wrote  a  memo  on  it,  describing  the  concept. 
Two  of  the  big  questions  we  had  were  whether  you  could  contain  it, 
and  would  the  radiochemistry  be  any  good.  As  usual,  we  got  into 
big  arguments  with  Los  Alamos  on  all  issues  from  technical  to  cost. 

The  chemists  here  felt  they  could  do  the  chemistry.  We  had 
questions  about  the  sampling.  We  didn't  know  if  we'd  have  a  pool 
of  molten  rock,  or  what  we  would  to  get  into.  Before  the  event  we 
had  lots  of  speculation  on  what  would  really  happen.  There  were 
some  calculations  made  in  terms  of  whatyou  might  expect  in  ground 
shock,  and  surface  motion,  and  so  on. 


32 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


We  choose  the  site  based  on  topography.  We  decided  on  a 
tunnel  geometry  because  we  thought  that  would  be  the  best  way  to 
do  diagnostics.  And  that's  how  we  finally  ended  up  with  Rainier 
Mesa.  We  ended  up  in  tuff,  which  was  good  stuff  to  dig  in,  but  we 
didn't  know  anything  about  it.  We  didn't  know  what  tuff  was  when 
it  was  first  mentioned  to  us. 

But  then  we  began  to  get  into  public  information  trouble.  A 
number  of  us  were  interacting  with  the  geophysical  community, 
which  we  always  had  done,  for  all  sorts  of  reasons.  Dave  Griggs 
made  the  suggestion,  "Look,  if  you  are  going  to  fire  a  shot  like  this, 
for  the  first  time  we'll  have  a  shot  closely  coupled  to  the  ground. 
We'II  know  the  yield,  we'll  know  the  coordinates,  and  we  ought  to 
make  this  information  available  to  the  geophysical  world,  so  they 
can  take  advantage  of  it.  In  fact,  you  ought  to  announce  it  ahead 
of  time." 

Well,  we  went  through  this,  and  were  told  to  hold  the  time  of 
firing  to  a  tenth  of  a  second  at  some  predetermined  time,  which  we 
agreed  to  do.  If  for  any  reason  we  were  delayed,  and  couldn't  meet 
that  time,  we  agreed  to  wait  twenty-four  hours  and  try  again.  And 
we  published  this.  That  was  fine.  It  was  very  altruistic  and  lovely, 
and  in  the  right  spirit  of  technical  cooperation.  But  about  a  month 
or  six  weeks  before  we  were  going  to  be  ready,  an  international 
geophysical  meeting  took  place  in  Toronto,  and  by  then  this  event 
was  getting  lots  of  interest  on  the  part  of  the  seismic  geophysical 
community.  At  this  meeting  some  guy  made  some  statement  about 
Livermore  planning  to  fire  an  "earthquake  maker,"  and  it  hit  the 
headlines,  and  of  course  got  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission's 
attention. 

Carothers:  "AEC  TO  FIRE  EARTHQUAKE  BOMB  !  H"  I  can 
see  the  headlines. 

Johnson:  That's  right.  Well,  that  did  it.  Strauss,  who  was  then 
Chairman  of  the  AEC,  called  and  said,  "What  in  the  hell  are  you 
guys  doing  out  there?"  I  said,  "Nothing." 

So  I  went  in  to  talk  with  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission,  and 
I  said,  "We've  gone  through  all  the  calculations  of  what  the  seismic 
effects  might  be.  This  is  a  very  low  yield  thing  that  we're  trying  to 
shoot;  1 .7  kilotons."  That  seemed  quite  small  to  us.  "And  we've 
done  all  these  calculations."  Strauss  said,  "That's  not  good  enough. 
I'll  tell  you  what  you've  gotto  do  before  I'll  authorize  this  shot.  You 


The  Rainier  Event 


33 


have  to  assure  the  Commission  that  tne  shot  itself  will  not  cause  an 
earthquake.  Number  two,  that  it  will  not  trigger  an  earthquake,  and 
number  three,  if  a  natural  earthquake  occurs  at  the  same  time,  you 
have  to  prove  you  didn't  do  it." 

So  we  put  together  a  committee.  We  got  Perry  Byerly, 
somebody  out  of  Cal  Tech,  i  guess  Dave  Griggs  was  on  it,  a  fellow 
named  Roland  Beers  whom  none  of  us  knew,  and  somebody  from 
back  east.  They  met.  And  we  told  them  what  we  were  going  to  do, 
and  the  whole  thing,  and  Byerly's  first  remark  was,  "You  shouldn't 
be  so  presumptuous.  One  point  seven  kilotons?  That  will  do 
nothing  seismically."  I  said,  "I'm  not  arguing  with  you." 

I  called  up  Strauss  an  appropriate  time  later  and  I  said,  "We've 
gone  through  this  thing.  This  board  of  experts  got  together,  now 
we  want  to  come  in  and  talk  to  you."  Strauss  said,  "Who's  on  that 
committee?"  I  told  him,  and  he  said,  "I  don't  want  any  West  Coast 
people  on  it."  This  was  a  setback,  because  the  West  Coast  seismic 
mafia  was  most  of  it.  It  turned  out  that  the  only  guy  who  was 
acceptable  to  them  to  be  at  this  presentation  was  this  guy  Roland 
Beers,  whom  we  didn't  know. 

Beers  came  to  the  meeting.  He  was  a  soft-spoken  guy,  and 
didn't  seem  to  know  what  was  going  on.  I  thought,  "We've  lost  the 
shot."  I  muttered  to  my  partners,  "I  don't  think  we're  going  to  win 
this  one.  I  don't  know  this  guy;  he  didn't  say  anything  when  we  were 
meeting,  and  I  don't  know  who  he  is." 

So  we  go  assemble  with  the  Commission  and  have  the  meeting. 

I  go  through  my  pitch,  describing  the  experiment  and  so  on,  what 
we  were  doing,  and  what  the  conclusion  of  this  panel  was.  Strauss 
then  looked  at  Beers  and  said,  "Beers,  what  do  you  think  is  the 
largest  explosion  that  you  could  safely  fire  in  Nevada,  under¬ 
ground?"  I  thought,  "Oh  God,  what's  he  going  to  say?"  And  he 
said,  so  quietly  Strauss  could  barely  hear  him  across  this  enormous 
table,  "About  a  megaton."  Strauss  said,  "What  I"  Beers  said, 
"About  a  megaton,  sir."  That  was  all  he  said,  and  Strauss  said,  "You 
fellows  get  out  of  here.  The  Commission  and  I  are  going  into  an 
executive  session."  Which  they  did,  and  they  decided  favorably. 
"Okay,  but  be  careful." 

So  off  we  go,  and  by  then  the  furor  had  gotten  to  the  state  of 
Nevada.  The  day  before  the  test  somebody  from  the  Governor's 
office  came  to  the  Test  Site  to  serve  an  injunction  on  the  AEC  to 


34 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


stop  the  shot.  The  Governor  said,  "We'il  hold  the  AEC  directly 
responsible  for  any  damage  to  public  works  in  the  state  of  Nevada." 
He  wasn't  going  to  take  any  responsibility.  Well,  bless  Jim  Reeves, 
who  was  the  AEC  Area  Manager  for  the  Site.  The  day  the  guy  came 
out  to  serve  the  summons,  Jim  had  to  make  extensive  surveys  of  the 
upper  end  of  the  Test  Site.  He  was  unreachable. 

Carothers:  Well,  he  was  just  doing  his  job.  He  has  to  go  see 
what's  going  on,  once  in  a  while. 

Johnson:  Sure,  he's  the  Manager.  And  we  were  going  to  fire 
the  next  day. 

We  had  a  technical  advisory  board,  with  respect  to  the 
containment.  These  were  vulcanoiogists,  geophysicists,  I  don't 
know  who  all,  but  distinguished  people.  The  night  before  the  shot 
we  had  a  final  review.  Shall  we  go  ahead,  or  is  there  something  else 
we  should  do?  And  the  conclusion  was  everything  is  fine,  go  ahead. 

We  arrived  at  the  CP  early  in  the  morning;  I  forget  what  time 
we  were  to  fire,  but  it  was  during  daylight  so  we'd  get  good 
photography.  I  was  there,  and  one  of  the  members  of  the  advisory 
group  came  up.  We  were  about  an  hour  away  from  firing.  This  was 
a  fellow  named  Fran  Porzel,  who  was  an  expert  in  ground  shock,  and 
shock  measurements,  and  so  on.  He  was  from  Battelle,  in  Chicago. 
He  came  up  and  said,  "Gerry,  I'm  nervous  about  that  tunnel,  about 
the  containment.  There  are  only  thirteen  feet  of  sandbags  in  there." 
I  said,  "Oh  yes,  we  all  know  that."  -  He  said,  "I'm  not  sure  that's 
going  to  hold." 

And  then  he  began  to  pace  back  and  forth.  And  he  kept  talking 
and  walking  beside  me.  He  said,  "Can't  you  just  hold  the  shot  for 
a  few  days?  We'll  go  back  in  and  put  some  more  sandbags  in."  I 
said,  "How  many  sandbags  would  you  put  in?  What  would  you  do?" 
and  so  on.  Well,  he  wasn't  sure.  I  said,  "Well,  Fran,  I'll  tell  you. 
We've  worked  on  this  thing  for  a  year.  We've  had  the  best  advice 
we  could  get,  including  last  night.  If  we  open  that  tunnel  up  to  do 
anything,  we  have  to  start  over,  repeat  all  our  dry  runs,  and  check 
everything  out  again.  We'd  have  to  do  everything.  I  don't  know 
how  long  it  would  take  us  to  get  it  straightened  out  so  we  could  get 
back  to  a  shot  day.  And  this  is  the  end  of  the  operation.  We're 
holding  the  operation  to  get  this  shot  off,  and  it's  an  experiment. 
We  could  easily  lose  the  whole  thing,  administratively,  and  I  don't 
want  to  do  that." 


The  Rainier  Event 


35 


He  said,  "You  know  if  that  blows  out,  everybody  here  will  say 
they  knew  it  was  going  to  happen,  and  it  will  be  your  neck  that  will 
be  out."  I  said,  "Well,  that's  my  job.  But  there's  just  no  way  that 
I  can  see  to  postpone.  We're  committed  now.  We  have  to  go 
ahead."  I  said,  "I  appreciate  your  bringing  it  up.  There  really  isn't 
a  choice.  If  we  cancel  it  now  we  might  not  get  another  crack  at  it." 
But  he  really  put  the  heat  on  me. 

And  of  course,  as  it  turned  out,  it  worked  perfectly,  but  that's 
just  a  bit  of  history,  and  he  could  have  turned  out  to  be  right.  But 
we  had  done  everything  we  knew  to  do.  And  God  knows  what  would 
have  happened  if  we  had  shut  down.  I  think  if  we  hadn't  fired  at  that 
time  we  probably  would  not  have  gone  to  underground  testing.  I 
think  it's  unlikely.  The  next  year  we  entered  into  the  nuclear  test 
moratorium.  We  wouldn't  have  had  time  to  do  a  test,  set  it  up,  and 
do  enough  to  learn  any  more  about  it. 

But  we  did  fire  it,  and  it  was  well  established  by  the  end  of  the 
'next  year,  as  a  technique.  We  were  lucky  in  hindsight,  as  it  turns 
out.  The  seal  was  just  a  simple  spiral.  We  only  had  those  thirteen 
feet  of  sandbags,  and  a  steel  door  to  stop  gases,  but  the  stemming 
worked  perfectly.  We  got  overconfident  later  and  had  some 
problems,  but  Rainier  did  work  very  well. 

And  as  it  turned  out,  we  recovered  the  radiochemical  samples. 
The  rock  had  frozen  right  away  because  the  cavity  collapsed,  so  we 
never  did  find  molten  rock.  But  we  were  concerned  about  tapping 
into  molten  rock.  The  question  was,  "How  can  we  test  that  out?" 
Naturally  we  went  to  the  vulcanologists,  and  they  told  us  that  no  one 
ever  drilled  into  a  molten  zone.  The  way  they  got  their  samples  was 
to  wait  for  the  molten  rock  to  come  to  the  surface  so  they  could 
scoop  it  out  in  a  bucket. 

About  that  time  there  was  an  eruption  on  Kilauea  Iki  in  which 
a  pool  of  lava  some  three  hundred  feet  deep  was  formed,  and  later 
a  thin  crust  about  a  twenty  feet  or  so  thick  formed.  So  we  sent  some 
guys  from  the  Lab  to  drill  through  the  crust  and  collect  samples, 
which  they  did.  They  only  had  to  drill  through  twenty  feet  of  stuff, 
but  to  get  to  a  suitable  location  they  had  to  walk  out  on  this  crusty 
lava  flow  for  several  hundred  feet.  Don  Rawson  headed  the  group 
out  there.  They  had  a  contract  driller  and  crew,  but  they  were  with 
them.  That  experience  convinced  me  that  at  Livermore  you  could 
get  somebody  to  volunteer  for  anything. 


36 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Gary,  when  did  you  first  became  involved  in  the 
containment  business? 

Higgins:  It  was  at  the  Laboratory,  not  at  the  Test  Site,  and  it 
was  almost  coincident  with  the  firing  of  Rainier.  Gerry  Johnson, 
who  was  then  the  Division  Leader  of  the  test  organization,  I  think 
then  called  Test  Division,  was  working  with  Bill  Ogle  and  A1  Graves 
from  Los  Alamos,  who  were  deeply  involved  in  the  conduct  of  the 
whole  Plumbbob  operation.  Gerry  went  to  Chemistry  Division,  and 
what  Gerry  wanted  was  someone  to  look  into  the  question  of  how 
you  would  do  a  radiochemical  yield  measurement  on  Rainier,  or  a 
test  like  Rainier.  I  was  in  the  radiochemistry  group  of  the  Chemistry 
Division,  and  in  the  heavy  elements  part  of  the  group.  My 
responsibility  was  the  separation  of  the  plutonium  and  transplutonic 
elements  from  the  debris  samples  from  the  atmospheric  shots. 

So,  I  came  into  this  picture  just  about  the  month  Rainier  was 
fired.  I  didn't  know  a  thing  about  what  the  underground  effects  of 
a  nuclear  detonation  would  be,  so  I  thought  I  would  go  talk  to  some 
experts,  who  obviously  would  know.  And  so  I  began  to  talk  to 
experts  at  Los  Alamos  and  at  Livermore.  It  turned  out  that  all  of 
the  experts  had  not  come  to  a  consensus.  There  was  a  range  of 
expectations.  At  one  extreme  was  the  prediction,  or  guess,  that 
Rainier  would  produce  a  bubble  of  molten  rock  about  a  meter  in 
radius,  and  that  the  debris  would  all  be  contained  in  that  lava. 

Carothers:  But  Gary,  you  can  just  look  at  the  calories  available 
and  know  that  there  will  be  more  molten  rock  than  a  few  tons. 

Higgins:  You'd  think  so.  At  the  other  extreme  there  was  the 
expectation  that  there  would  be  something  like  a  100  meter  void, 
and  the  debris  would  be  contained  in  a  thin  shell  of  glass  lining  that 
void.  This  was  about  the  period  of  time  when  the  French  science 
fiction  writer,  Camille  Rougeron,  who  made  his  living  selling  these 
Jules  Vern  type  ideas  to  the  popular  press,  published  an  article  that 
said  if  you  detonated  a  nuclear  explosion  underground,  in  rock, 
you'd  get  a  glass  bubble  full  of  steam,  and  you  could  then  power 
generators  with  that  steam  for  a  very  long  time.  That  was  before 
we'd  ever  done  anything  in  the  Plowshare  program. 

Carothers:  Who  were  these  experts  you  talked  to? 


The  Rainier  Event 


37 


Higgins:  Gene  Pelsor  was  the  one  in  Livermore  that  I  particu¬ 
larly  remember,  because  his  prediction  was,  within  the  uncertainty 
of  the  yield,  correct  about  both  the  size  of  the  void  that  would  be 
produced,  and  the  approximate  amount  of  shock-melted  material. 
His  arithmetic,  the  details  of  how  he  arrived  at  the  numbers  were 
incorrect,  but  with  self-canceling  errors  there  were  enough  wrong 
things  that  his  conclusions  ended  up  being  pretty  close  to  right. 

Carothers:  If  you  have  enough  wrong  things  some  of  them  will 
make  the  answer  too  big,  and  some  of  them  will  have  the  effect  of 
making  it  too  small,  so  you  might  come  close  to  the  right  answer? 

Higgins:  Yes.  The  guys  who  were  really  far  off  were  the  ones 
who  made  one  mistake  and  got  everything  else  perfectly  to  maybe 
four  significant  figures. 

One  of  the  people  who  made  an  estimate  was  Stanley  Ulam,  at 
Los  Alamos,  who  was  a  theoretical  type  person.  He  made  one  very 
simple  mistake,  and  I'm  inferring  this  from  what  other  people  said; 
he  did  not  say  this  to  me.  His  error  was  to  neglect  the  vaporization 
of  rock,  in  that  he  went  directly  from  a  solid  to  a  Fermi  gas,  and  back 
to  a  solid.  That  neglects  the  region  of  condensed  molecular  gases. 
Half  the  energy  of  vaporization  of  rock  is  in  the  phase  transitions 
from  solid  to  vapor.  There's  another  half  that  takes  the  rock  from 
vapor  to  ionized  gas.  So,  the  first  half  is  a  very  important  step 
function  in  the  pressure-volume  relationship,  but  it's  easy  to  leave 
it  out  because  nothing  very  important  physically  is  going  on  except 
the  change  of  phase.  That  was  the  small  estimate. 

The  very  largest  estimate  came  from  Bill  Libby,  and  his  was  not 
very  different  from  Gene  Pelsor's.  The  reason  it  was  larger  was 
because  he  did  not  leave  any  strength  in  the  solid.  Gene  let  the  solid 
be  an  elastic  solid  forever;  what  Libby  did  was  pretend  it  was  a  liquid 
with  a  back  pressure,  but  no  strength.  The  way  to  say  that  correctly 
is  to  say  he  used  a  Poisson's  ratio  of  0.5  instead  of  0.3,  as  it  really 
is.  Which  is  kind  of  a  dumb  thing,  but  that  does  make  the  cavity  get 
bigger. 

Carothers:  He  would  have  been  correct  if  Rainier  had  been 
fired  in  water. 


38 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Higgins:  Yes.  It  would  have  been  precise  in  water  until  the 
rebound  occurred.  Rebound  occurs  in  water  too,  and  it  causes  a 
recompression,  so  the  bubble  rings.  It  oscillates  with  a  period  that 
is  proportional  to  the  depth,  which  is  a  kind  of  restoring  force. 

Carothers:  If  the  energy  from  the  device  wasn't  going  to  melt 
much  rock,  where  did  they  think  that  energy  was  going  to  go? 

Higgins:  Well,  you  and  I  think  it's  self-evident  that  there  would 
be  a  lot  of  melt.  But,  naively,  people  thought  that  all  of  the  energy 
would  go  out  in  the  seismic  wave.  If  you  fired  a  kiloton  explosion 
you'd  get  a  kiloton  seismic  wave.  If  the  earth  were  perfectly  elastic, 
that's  what  would  happen.  But  it's  not  perfectly  elastic,  and  that 
isn't  what  happens.  It's  rather  fortunate  that  only  something  like 
one  part  in  ten  to  the  fourth  of  the  total  energy  ultimately  gets  into 
the  seismic  wave  as  energy. 

Dave  Griggs,  who  has  passed  away,  was  active  in  the  seismic 
community,  and  was  the  author  of  the  first  paper  that  made  an 
absolute  calibration  of  the  seismic  magnitudes  of  earthquakes 
translated  into  energy.  It  was  based  on  the  nuclear  explosions 
carried  out  in  the  South  Pacific  -  -  I  believe  it  was  the  1 954  series. 
If  the  conversion  were  not  so  small,  the  convergence  of  the  waves 
at  the  antipode  of  the  explosion  would  have  been  sufficient  to  cause 
an  eruption,  like  a  volcano. 

That  was  if  all  the  energy  had  gone  into  seismic  energy.  The 
people  in  the  seismic  community  had  calculated  that  if  all  the  energy 
went  out  around  the  world  and  came  back  into  the  same  place  at  the 
antipode,  and  none  of  it  were  lost,  there  would  be  another  explo¬ 
sion.  It  wouldn't  be  any  bigger  than  the  detonation,  but  if  the 
energy  went  out  one  hundred  percent  elastically,  it  would  be  as  big 
as  -  -  or  a  little  smaller  than  -  -  the  original  explosion.  So  all  you 
would  do  then,  if  you  wanted  to  destroy  a  target,  was  to  go  to  its 
exact  seismic  antipode,  fire  off  the  appropriate  energy  device,  and 
say,  "Who,  me?" 

Carothers:  That  sort  of  thing  sounds  like  the  days  of  the  high 
altitude  tests,  where  the  thought  was  that  you  would  detonate  a 
device  at  some  altitude  here,  and  all  the  ionized  particles  would 
going  running  down  the  magnetic  field  lines  and  cover  up  the 
enemy's  radar  over  there. 


The  Rainier  Event 


39 


Higgins:  Right.  You  got  it.  But  the  business  of  the  earthquake, 
and  the  elastic  world  was  a  real  concern.  They  still  compute  the 
elastic  equivalence  of  earthquake  yields  as  the  the  absolute  magni¬ 
tude.  If  you  take  the  elastically  coupled  value  for  a  magnitude  six 
earthquake,  it's  way  less  than  one  kiloton.  And  so  there  was  real 
concern  that  one  kiloton,  if  elastically  coupled,  would  be  like  a 
magnitude  seven  earthquake.  A  magnitude  seven  earthquake,  it 
causes  some  damage.  But  the  real  world  is  not  elastic,  which  is  of 
some  annoyance  to  those  who  like  to  calculate  things,  because  it 
would  be  much  simpler  if  it  were. 

By  the  time  Rainier  was  fired  there  was  a  group  of  consultants 
who  were  assembled,  ad  hoc  at  first,  and  then  that  group  was  was 
formalized  more  or  less,  to  advise  the  AEC,  or  the  Manager  of  the 
Nevada  Operations  Office,  about  such  matters  as  safety.  Dave 
Griggs  was  on  that  committee.  He  got  in  by  being  in  the  seismic 
community,  and  being  an  Air  Force  consultant.  He  brought  George 
Kennedy  along  because  George  had  been  a  student  of  George 
Morey's,  and  knew  about  the  melting  of  rocks  and  so  on. 

Carothers:  People  certainly  knew  some  things  about  the 
response  of  the  earth,  because  for  years  and  years  lots  and  lots  of 
people  had  set  off  thousands  and  thousands  of  explosive  charges. 
All  kinds  of  sizes,  and  in  all  kinds  of  places,  and  they  knew  the  earth 
didn't  respond  that  elastically.  So  what  were  these  people  in  such 
an  uproar  about? 

Higgins:  Well,  precisely  the  same  thing  that  they  were  in  such 
an  uproar  about  on  things  like  Three  Mile  Island.  It  was  the 
unknown  feature.  And  the  people  involved  in  the  Test  Program  at 
that  time  really  weren't  in  the  same  community  as  the  people  who 
had  all  of  this  experience  with  high  explosives.  There  were  a  few 
individuals  who  carried  that  experience  over.  One  was  a  guy  named 
Roy  Goranson,  in  the  very  early  days  at  the  Laboratory,  who  had 
spent  a  lot  of  his  life  with  high  pressure  steam,  and  steam  explosions, 
and  equations  of  state  of  water  and  rocks. 

Gerry  Johnson  had  the  experience  of  working  with  artillery  in 
the  Navy,  and  he  knew  from  his  experience  what  the  detonation  of 
a  thousand  pounds  of  TNT  would  do,  and  how  it  would  scale.  He 
had  HE  experiments  done  prior  to  Rainier.  They  tried  to  produce 
containment,  and  discovered  one  of  the  differences  between  TNT 
and  nuclear,  which  is  the  residual  gas. 


40 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


You  can't  contain  high  explosives  unless  you  can  also  contain 
lots  of  residual  gas.  For  every  pound  of  high  explosive,  you  produce 
a  pound  or  so  of  residual  gas.  In  a  nuclear  explosion  the  rock 
vaporizes  and  does  all  of  its  mechanical  work,  then  as  soon  as  it  cools 
off  it  goes  back  to  be  some  kind  of  rock  again,  and  the  gas  pressure 
is  gone.  So,  the  containment  of  the  nuclear  debris  is  a  much  simpler, 
although  more  sophisticated,  problem  than  the  containment  of  a 
high  explosive  charge. 

It's  really  extremely  difficult  to  contain  high  explosives.  People 
in  oil  fields  and  in  mining  are  painfully  aware  of  that  problem.  For 
that  reason  they  have  criteria  for  safety  and  for  detonations  that  are 
very  different  from  those  for  the  safety  and  containment  of  nuclear 
explosions.  The  difference  is  understood  by  a  few  people,  but  most 
people  who  grow  up  in  one  community  don't  comprehend  the 
problems  that  people  in  the  other  community  face. 

People  who  have  grown  up  thinking  nuclear  containment 
cannot  understand  why  the  oil  field  people  want  explosives  with  the 
highest  possible  specific  energy  with  the  lowest  possible  residual 
gases  -  -  they're  extremely  fond  of  nitroglycerine,  for  example, 
which  is  terribly  hazardous  to  handle.  So  you  say,  "Why  don't  you 
use  something  like  ammonium  nitrate?  It's  a  lot  safer."  And  they 
say,  "Yeah,  but  we  can't  get  enough  in  there  to  shatter  the  rock." 
"But  why  do  you  want  to  shatter  the  rock?  That  just  makes  little  tiny 
particles,  and  they'll  plug  up.  What  you  want  are  fractures."  They 
say,  "Yeah,  but  if  we  do  that,  it  blows  out  the  top  of  the  hole." 
"Well,  then  why  don't  you  stem  it?"  "Oh,  you  can't  stem  it." 

They  don't  shoot  stemmed  shots.  They  put  the  explosive 
down,  detonate  it,  and  let  it  blow  out.  They  don't  try,  because  they 
have  never  been  successful  in  containing  the  gases.  Therefore,  they 
don't  use  some  of  the  most  valuable  products  of  the  explosion.  The 
high  pressure  gas  would  do  them  more  benefit  than  the  shockwave, 
but  they  don't  use  it. 

But,  back  to  the  rocks.  It  was  difficult  to  select  which  expert 
to  believe,  except  I  could  reject  there  would  be  no  bubble.  All  of 
them  shared  one  thing;  there  would  be  molten  rock,  and  I  believed 
that.  The  first  conclusion  I  came  to  was  that  it  was  reasonable  from 
all  points  of  view  to  expect  the  debris  to  be  in  fused  rock.  And  if 
the  molten  rock  cooled,  there  would  be  glass.  If  it  stayed  molten, 
then  the  question  would  be  how  would  you  sample  it.  The  obvious 


The  Rainier  Event 


41 


answer  was,  you  would  need  to  drill  into  it.  But,  without  measuring 
we  had  no  idea  how  complete  or  how  good  the  samples  would  be, 
or  how  efficient  or  effective  the  sampling  would  be. 

We  had  some  fused  rock  from  the  ground  surface  of  a  number 
of  near-surface  bursts,  including  Trinity,  so  we  could  do  the 
chemistry  on  fused  rock.  We  had  done  all  of  those  things  with 
samples  picked  up  from  the  surface.  But  we  had  no  idea  what 
concentration  of  debris  to  expect  in  the  samples  we  hoped  to  get. 
We  didn't  know  whether  we  were  going  to  need  a  gram  or  a 
kilogram.  And  that,  of  course,  depended  on  how  much  rock  got 
melted  per  kiloton.  We  did  do  some  sensible  estimates,  again  using 
Gene  Pelsor's  calculations  primarily. 

I  believe  Gene  was  asked  to  attempt  to  fully  contain  the 
explosion.  Not  maybe  for  the  reasons  that  we  want  it  contained 
now,  but  that  was  his  objective.  The  stemming  procedure  on  Rainier 
had  been  designed  as  a  rather  elaborate  spiral  buttonhook.  The 
philosophy,  expressed  in  different  ways  by  different  people,  was 
that  the  radioactive  debris  would  be  charging  around  the  tunnel  at 
velocity  V,  and  by  the  time  it  went  around  the  spiral,  the  seismic 
shockwave  would  have  come  across  and  closed  off  the  tunnel, 
trapping  the  radioactive  debris.  The  placement  of  the  sandbag  plug, 

I  believe,  was  to  stop  jets.  The  idea  that  the  buttonhook  would 
achieve  containment  neglected  a  lot  of  things.  It  worked  for  all  the 
wrong  reasons,  but  it  worked,  that  one  time  at  least,  very  well,  and 
it  established  that  containment  could  happen.  I  believe  that  a  lot 
of  Gene's  work  was  not  recognized  as  being  as  good  as  it  was, 
considering  how  little  anybody  really  knew. 

Carothers:  Somebody  wanted  to  try  to  contain  the  shot,  and 
that  was  probably  Gerry  Johnson. 

Higgins:  Yes.  I  think  it  was  Gerry,  although  Al  Graves  had 
made  the  statement,  before  this  was  done,  that  we  weren't  going  to 
be  able  to  continue  to  carry  out  atmospheric  nuclear  tests  forever, 
and  we  really  ought  to  find  an  alternative  method.  He  didn't  say  it 
should  be  underground,  or  in  deep  space,  or  how.  There  were 
actually  four  ideas  that  were  kicked  around  in  '56  and  '57. 
Underground  was  one,  deep  space  was  two,  deep  ocean  was  three. 
Under  the  ice  cap,  either  in  the  Antarctic  or  under  the  Greenland 
ice  cap,  was  the  fourth  possible  way  of  carrying  out  tests  without 


42 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


contaminating  the  environment  in  any  gross  way.  We  might  criticize 
the  ice  cap  or  the  ocean  ways  as  contaminating,  but  at  that  time,  in 
that  period,  that  looked  like  complete  containment. 

Well,  Rainier  was  fired.  The  next  thing  then  was  to  find 
someone  who  could  drill  into  it.  In  the  fifties  a  lot  of  our  drilling 
was  done  by  contract  drillers,  and  most  of  the  early  drilling 
underground  was  by  E.  ].  Longyear  people,  and  people  that  they 
hired.  The  Longyear  people  were  having  real  difficulty,  because  the 
drillers  had  to  be  cleared;  you  had  to  have  a  green  badge  to  work 
with  the  radioactive  debris  in  those  days.  To  find  drillers  that  they 
could  get  a  long  enough  history  on  to  get  them  a  Q  clearance  was 
not  easy.  Drillers,  by  habit,  or  choice,  or  circumstance,  don't  stay 
in  one  place  for  very  many  months  at  a  time.  They  go  from  crew 
to  crew,  and  place  to  place,  wherever  the  work  is  good  and  their 
fancy  takes  them. 

Diamond  drillers,  who  are  a  group  that  we  found  were  experi¬ 
enced  in  the  small  drills  we  needed  for  the  underground  rigs,  were 
used  to  doing  ore  deposit  definition  for  the  mining  companies  all 
over  the  world.  So,  most  of  the  drillers  we  had  were  non-U. S. 
citizens,  which  made  it  even  harder  to  get  clearances  for  them.  We 
had  a  real  problem  getting  three  men  to  handle  each  of  the  three 
shifts  -  -  actually  it  means  four  shifts  because  we  were  going  to  go 
seven  days  a  week. 

Finding  that  number  of  drillers  who  were  Q-cleared  was  really 
very  difficult.  Add  to  that  the  gossip  that  was  going  back  and  forth 
in  the  union  halls,  or  in  the  beer  halls  maybe,  about  the  possibility 
of  thousands  of  pounds  per  square  inch  of  steam,  and  such  high 
radiation  that  they'd  be  sterilized  forever.  One  fellow  told  me  he 
was  told  that  the  samples  they  would  recover,  if  they  ever  did  get 
to  where  they  were  supposed  to,  were  going  to  be  so  radioactive  that 
the  whole  crew  on  that  shift  was  going  to  be  killed.  Well,  it  makes 
it  real  hard  to  get  people  to  do  that,  no  matter  how  much  you  try 
to  convince  them,  or  talk  about  what  to  expect.  And,  we  weren't 
all  that  sure  ourselves.  We  knew  the  business  about  the  radioactivity 
wasn't  true,  but  beyond  that  we  didn't  really  know  what  the 
conditions  would  be  when  we  got  there. 

Carothers:  What  was  your  role  on  the  reentry? 


PORTAL 


42a 


The  Rainier  Event 


43 


Higgins:  People  didn't  have  administratively  designated  roles 
in  those  days.  My  role  was  sort  of  keeping  tabs  of  what  was 
observed,  and  reporting  it,  and  asking  questions.  I  talked  to  the 
drillers,  and  the  geologists.  We  had  a  geologist  by  then,  and  the 
Geological  Survey  was  involved.  And  I  did  chemistry  measure¬ 
ments.  A  lot  of  those.  I  still  did  that  part  of  it. 

Our  first  attempts  were  to  go  into  the  tunnel,  establish  an 
alcove,  and  drill  horizontally.  I  found  out  drills  don't  easily  do  that; 
they  don't  drill  horizontally,  because  the  drill  stem  droops.  So, 
there  was  the  issue  of,  well,  where  is  the  drill?. 

Before  we  had  penetrated  the  radioactive  zone  in  the  tunnel  we 
had  started  drilling  from  the  surface,  but  that  was  860  feet  up.  For 
reasons  I've  never  been  able  to  understand,  they  cored  all  the  way 
from  the  surface  instead  of  just  drilling  in,  and  then  switching  to  a 
core  bit.  The  communication  between  ourselves  and  the  construc¬ 
tion  people  in  the  field  was  not  good.  Perhaps  we  asked  them  to  core 
from  the  surface,  not  realizing  that  they  could  very  easily  switch 
from  a  spade  bit  that  would  have  drilled  much  faster  and  have  gotten 
down  to  the  ground  zero  zone  very  early,  to  a  core  bit. 

However,  the  hole  from  the  surface  never  intercepted  any  of 
the  radioactive  debris  because  it  came  out  in  the  chimney,  and  all 
the  drilling  fluid  ran  out  of  the  hole.  The  drillers  maintained  that 
they  could  not  drill  without  fluid  because  the  drill  bits  would  not 
survive  if  there  was  no  fluid  in  the  hole.  In  those  days  they  didn't 
have  reverse  circulation  drilling.  They  only  had  forward  circulation, 
which  meant  that  the  fluid  came  out  behind  the  bit.  So,  if  there  was 
nothing  around  the  bit  to  confine  the  drilling  fluid,  it  was  not  cooling 
the  bit;  it  was  cooling  the  rock  wherever  it  ran  to.  We  really  had  to 
learn  the  drilling  business  before  we  could  ask  the  right  questions, 
and  we  didn't  know  them  then. 

I  also  found  out  that  the  progress  in  drilling  in  the  tunnel  was 
painfully  slow.  The  drill  would  be  turning  around  and  around  for 
days  on  end,  but  it  never  got  anywhere.  I  found  out  the  reason  that 
it  wasn't  getting  anywhere  was  that  the  drillers  didn't  want  it  to.  As 
I  said,  there  were  rumors,  including  the  one  that  this  cavity  might 
contain  thousands  of  pounds  per  square  inch  of  steam. 


44 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Well,  Gary,  the  drillers  felt  they  were  going  to  drill 
into  a  volcano,  filled  with  radioactive  steam  and  molten  rock. 
Would  you  want  to  drill  into  something  like  that,  which  would  spew 
all  over  you  and  kill  you  and  all  of  the  members  of  your  drill  crew? 

Higgins:  Of  course  not.  So,  they  would  turn  the  drill,  but 
they'd  never  push.  We  had  a  huge  cavern  worn  out  of  the  side  of 
the  alcove  into  the  tuff,  but  it  went  in  only  a  few  feet.  I  think  there 
was  a  lot  more  gossip  and  misinformation  than  we  in  the  Laboratory 
ever  heard.  I  do  know  that  there  were  drillers  who  would  make  all 
kinds  of  excuses  for  not  going  on  that  particular  drilling  crew. 

Flangas:  Well,  there  was  always  some  concern  over  the 
unknown,  but  for  those  of  us  who  came  out  of  the  mining  business, 
we  were  used  to  some  risk.  Now,  there  is  certainly  a  difference 
between  intelligent  risk  and  recklessness,  and  some  of  us  know  the 
difference.  Gary  Higgins  became  an  integral  part  of  that  crew,  and 
I  personally  had  a  great  deal  of  confidence  in  his  judgment  and  his 
experience.  He  didn't  try  to  butt  into  the  actual  mechanics  of  what 
we  were  doing,  but  he  was  there  to  advise  us  on  the  things  we  didn't 
know  about.  It  was  a  very,  very  close  relationship.  We  trusted  him, 
and  his  judgment  was  good. 

Carothers:  His  story  is  that  it  took  a  long  time  to  drill  back  into 
the  cavity,  because  the  drillers  weren't  very  anxious  to  get  there. 

Flangas:  There  may  have  been  some  of  that  -  -  some  of  the 
miners  were  that  way.  Occasionally  you  would  run  into  somebody 
who  would  be  a  little  bit  spooked,  but  once  it  was  explained  to  me, 
and  I  had  a  fairly  decent  grasp  of  what  to  expect,  and  as  long  as  the 
leadership  was  confident  in  what  they  were  doing,  our  people  just 
followed. 

Higgins:  Well,  finally,  after  a  couple  of  months  of  drilling,  and 
I  think  it  was  close  to  a  year  after  Rainier  was  fired,  because  we 
didn't  start  immediately,  the  drillers  penetrated,  unexpectedly,  a 
radioactive  zone.  That  got  radioactive  debris  into  the  tunnel,  and 
we  had  to  shut  down  because  the  rad-safe  people  said,  "You've 
contaminated  everything  here."  It  was  great  news  to  me,  but  sad 
news  to  the  drillers. 

I  went  down  and  tried  to  find  some  of  the  debris,  along  with 
some  of  the  people  from  the  NTS-LLL  contingent.  We  finally  sorted 
out  a  bunch  of  sand  and  stuff,  and  when  we  took  it  all  apart  a  grain 


The  Rainier  Event 


45 


at  a  time  we  could  find  some  little  black  pieces  of  glass  that  seemed 
to  be  more  radioactive  then  the  rest.  It  was  radioactive  enough  to 
be  an  annoyance,  but  not  a  big  enough  sample  to  do  any  kind  of 
measurements  on.  Maybe  we  could  have,  but  we  didn't  try.  Butthe 
key  thing  that  had  happened  was  that  we  had  penetrated  into  a 
radioactive  zone,  and  there  was  no  high  pressure  steam  in  it.  Now, 
it  was  hot  -  -  it  was  hot  enough  so  if  they  shut  off  the  circulation 
water  it  would  almost  boil.  The  water  that  was  coming  out  was  too 
hot  to  hold  your  hand  in.  But  the  drillers  then  had  great  confidence 
it  wasn't  going  to  erupt,  and  so,  within  the  next  two  weeks  they 
finally  hit  a  mass  of  lava.  It  was  black  frothy  rock,  and  they  got  cores 
of  it. 

We  found  a  piece  of  core  that  was  gray  and  gunky,  but  it  had 
a  radioactive  peak  in  it.  And  I  said,  "I  wonder  why  that  is?"  So, 

I  put  a  rubber  glove  on  and  squished  it.  I  found  little  glass  beads  that 
were  pendant  shaped.  From  the  shape,  and  the  fact  that  it  was  now 
solid  glass,  we  could  infer  that  it  had  been  hanging  from  something 
at  some  time.  We  said,  "If  it  was  hanging  from  something,  it  must 
have  been  in  a  void  space.  It  was  liquid,  and  it  has  the  shape  of  a 
liquid  drop,  so  there  couldn't  have  been  anything  against  it." 

And  so  we  began  to  reconstruct  that  after  the  cavity  had  grown 
underground  it  had  stood  there  for  a  little  while  -  -  at  least  long 
enough  for  these  glass  beads  to  solidify.  By  a  process  of  reconstruc¬ 
tion  we  worked  out  about  how  long  that  had  to  have  been.  We 
confirmed  that  by  measuring  the  ratio  of  some  of  the  gas-precursed 
radioisotopes  that  were  included  in  those  glass  pendants  to  wfjat 
they  were  in  unfractionated  radioactive  debris.  It  worked  out  that 
it  was  something  between  one  and  a  half  and  four  minutes  that  this 
glass  had  been  pseudostable.  The  whole  thing  stood  there  before 
the  roof  caved  in. 

We  also  looked  at  the  amount  of  water  that  was  dissolved  in  the 
glass.  Roy  Goranson  had  produced  a  table,  and  published  it  back 
in  the  thirties,  of  the  solubility  of  steam  in  silica  glass.  If  you 
quenched  a  glass  in  water  at  ten  bars  of  pressure,  what  percent  of 
that  glass  would  be  water,  and  how  much  water  would  remain  as 
vapor?  He  had  the  whole  table  of  solubility  of  water  in  silica  glass, 
and  we  got  the  pressure  of  the  Rainier  cavity  as  being  about  45  bars. 
We  observed  that  45  bars  was  not  all  that  different  from  the 
overburden  pressure,  at  that  depth  of  burst.  If  one  hypothesizes 
that  the  steam  expands  until  it's  in  equilibrium  with  the  external 


46 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


pressure,  then  all  of  the  pieces  balance.  So,  that  became  an  adopted 
hypothesis  for  containment;  that  the  cavity  size  is  such  that  the 
pressure  would  equal  the  overburden  pressure.  It  turns  out  that's 
probably  not  right,  exactly,  but  it  was  a  good  working  hypothesis. 
We  now  say  stress  instead  of  pressure,  and  it  is  probably  even 
correct. 

The  Rainier  cavity  was  about  fifty-five  or  fifty-six  feet  in  radius. 
That  was  the  size  it  would  have  been  if  the  material  in  the  first  meter 
or  so,  around  the  explosion,  were  transformed  into  steam  and  other 
gases,  and  they  expanded  until  the  pressure  was  somewhere  near  the 
overburden  pressure.  That  was  the  concept  of  a  balloon,  or  bubble, 
blowing  up  inside  a  pile  of  blocks,  with  no  rock  strength  involved, 
and  that  was  pretty  much  what  the  model  was  that  was  used  for  a 
lot  of  the  early  evaluations  of  containment.  It's  wrong,  and  it's 
wrong  in  a  lot  of  different  ways,  but  it  was  extremely  useful. 

About  a  year  or  so  after  Rainier  the  Hardtack  II  series  started, 
and  we  sampled  several  other  underground  shots  -  -  Logan,  Blanca, 
Evans,  Neptune.  We  did  not  explore,  in  any  detail,  any  of  those 
shots.  We  simply  drilled  enough  to  get  rad-chem  samples.  We  were 
still  going  into  the  tunnel  and  drilling  horizontally. 

Carothers:  When  you  were  drilling  horizontally,  were  you  then 
getting  your  samples  from  the  bottom  of  the  cavity,  or  from  the 
sides? 

Higgins:  They  came  from  the  bottom  of  the  cavity.  From  what 
we  discovered  on  Rainier  we  designed  the  scaling  law  that  says  the 
radius  of  the  cavity  is  5  5  times  W  to  the  1  /3  feet,  with  W,  the  yield, 
in  kiiotons.  That  was  where  we  found  the  puddle  that  gave  us  a 
good,  big  sample.  So,  the  target  we  drilled  for  was  based  on  design 
yield  and  55  times  W  to  the  1/3  feet.  We  usually  aimed  a  little 
above  that,  with  the  idea  that  if  we  missed  it  on  the  high  side,  as  the 
drill  progressed  across  the  cavity  it  would  go  through  the  puddle  on 
the  far  side.  And  we  would  carefully  log,  and  almost  always  saw  two 
blips  on  the  radioactivity  versus  depth  of  penetration  plot.  And  we 
then  said,  "That's  the  cavity  boundary."  And  on  the  far  side  we'd 
say,  "Well,  the  drill  probably  carried  some  radioactivity  along  with 
it,  so  the  far  side  is  probably  a  little  too  far."  So  you  subtract  a  little 
from  that,  and  do  things  like  that. 


The  Rainier  Event  47 

Those  measurements  were  recorded,  of  course,  and  people 
began  to  say,  "My,  isn't  this  interesting  that  these  things  scale 
together?"  Then  they  said,  "What  is  the  yield  that  you  get  from  the 
cavity  radius  by  using  the  5  5  W  to  the  1/3  feet  law  backwards?"  It 
wasn't  very  good,  but  it  was  a  number. 

We  went  through  Plumbbob  and  Hardtack  II  without  really 
understanding  anything  about  containment.  After  Hardtack  there 
was  the  moratorium,  and  during  that  time  we  did  the  post-shot 
exploration  of  Rainier,  in  great  detail.  That  was  to  measure 
accurately  the  boundaries  of  the  chimney  region  and  the  cavity 
region,  and  all  of  the  physical  parameters  of  the  shot.  We  wanted 
to  measure  things  like  the  temperature,  integrate  the  thermal 
energy,  and  locate  where  all  of  the  energy  was  deposited  perma¬ 
nently.  We  balanced  the  total  release,  as  we  measured  it  from  the 
rad-chem  yield,  to  the  thermal  energy  to  within  about  92  percent 
or  so.  We  inferred  that  the  energy  that  went  into  producing 
fractures,  which  we  couldn't  measure,  was  in  addition  to  that.  The 
seismic  energy  then  was  some  number  that  was  very  small,  which 
from  measuring  the  seismic  wave  you  could  also  say  was  true.  So, 
in  a  sense,  we  balanced  the  total  energy  of  the  shot  to  within  the 
precision  of  the  various  measurements.  Which  is  a  satisfying  thing 
for  scientists  to  do. 

We  began  to  understand,  in  the  course  of  those  drillings,  where 
the  radioactive  debris  was  distributed.  Not  only  the  kind  we  wanted 
for  the  rad-chem  samples,  but  also  there  were,  in  these  logs  of 
radioactivity  versus  distance,  blips  that  were  clearly  at  larger  radii 
than  the  inferred  cavity  radius. 

Carothers:  You  did  find  cavity  material  at  some  distance  from 
the  cavity  boundary?  Did  that  material  go  along  bedding  planes,  or 
did  you  think  there  were  fractures  in  the  rock  itself? 

Higgins:  Well,  we  didn't  recognize  bedding  planes  then.  We 
did  recognize  faults.  And  there  was  a  huge  fault  not  far  from  the 
Rainier  shot  point.  At  the  time  that  the  tunnel  was  mined  some  drift 
in  the  B  tunnel  complex  -  -  I  believe  it  was  12B-02  -  -  was 
terminated.  It  was  designed  to  go  into  the  mountain  a  little  further 
than  it  did,  but  it  ran  into  this  fault  that  was  so  large  that  you  could 
look  down  it.  You  could  literally  bend  over  and  look  in,  and  here 
was  this  hole  in  the  mountain  that  went  off  in  the  distance  and  you 
couldn't  see  how  far  it  went.  It  was  a  real  fault,  not  like  the  things 


48 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


we  map  these  days;  it  was  empty.  What  we  did  was  back  up  from 
this  big  open  fault  and  mine  the  buttonhook,  and  they  put  the  muck 
from  the  ground  zero  room  down  into  the  fault.  And  it  just 
disappeared  down  there.  We  didn't  have  to  haul  it  out  to  the  portal 
of  the  tunnel.  That  was  a  big  fault. 

The  reason  I  bring  the  fault  up  is  that  in  the  post-shot 
exploration  that  we  did  in  such  detail,  we  found  that  the  center  of 
all  of  the  energy,  both  the  radioactive  radius  from  ground  zero,  and 
the  thermal  regime,  was  displaced  by  a  couple  of  meters  toward  the 
fault.  It  was  clear  that  the  presence  of  that  fault  influenced  the 
growth  of  the  cavity,  and  there  wasn't  real  symmetry.  One  would 
like  to  say  everything  was  symmetric  about  the  detonation  point, 
but  it  really  wasn't. 

We  also  found  that  if  you  looked  in  detail,  this  cavity  that  we 
were  fond  of  drawing  with  a  compass  as  a  nice  sphere  really  had 
bumps  and  wiggles,  and  had  cracks  that  went  out.  Some  of  those 
cracks  were  filled  with  various  and  sundry  bits  of  what  had  been 
molten  rock.  We  also  found  evidence  of  enough  hot  vapor  having 
gone  out  into  some  of  the  fractures  to  change  the  color  of  the  rock 
on  each  side  of  the  fracture.  It  had  boiled  water  out  of  the  rock,  but 
there  was  no  melt  there.  So,  we  knew  that  the  simple  picture  of  a 
glass  lined  sphere,  like  a  Japanese  fishing  float,  the  kind  you  see 
hung  in  the  seafood  restaurants,  really  wasn't  what  the  inside  of  the 
cavity  looked  like.  It  was  really  pretty  bumpy  and  wiggly,  and 
probably  very  leaky. 

When  we  had  the  first  core  holes  we  saw  the  blip  on  each  side 
of  where  the  cavity  was,  but  when  we  mined  that  out  we  found  a 
jumble  of  slabs.  They  were  mostly  planar  slabs  of  melt-covered 
rocks,  folded  over  each  other.  When  the  geologist  identified  where 
these'slabs  had  come  from,  it  turned  out  they  had  come  from  a 
hundred  or  so  meters  above  the  detonation  point.  Then  we  began 
to  have  a  picture  that  there  was  the  growth  of  the  cavity,  then  a 
pseudo-stable  period  when  itsatthere  and  nothing  happened  except 
some  leaking  of  the  high  pressure  gases  pushing  out,  and  then  slabs 
and  bits  and  pieces  falling  in,  jumbling  in  helter-skelter,  and  the 
steam  being  quenched  by  pieces  that  were  fairly  large.  It  was  not 
a  hail  of  small  pieces  of  sand,  but  pretty  big  pieces  that  were  falling 
in,  and  the  steam  probably  migrated  some  distance  upward.  In  fact 
we  found  evidence  for  some  gas  radioactivities  in  the  rubble  three 
or  four  cavity  radii  above  the  detonation  point. 


The  Rainier  Event  49 

Carothers:  This  picture  you're  giving  of  these  slabs  of  material 
failing  in  doesn't  fit  very  well  with  the  accepted  picture  of  a  collapse. 
"The  geophones  were  quiet,  and  then  it  collapsed,  and  the  collapse 
progressed  upward  at  whatever  feet  per  second."  It's  not  exactly 
a  plug  falling  in,  but  it  occurs  very  rapidly,  and  the  picture  is  that 
the  layers  of  rock  would  still  be  basically  intact,  just  displaced  down 
some  distance.  You  don't  describe  anything  like  that. 

Higgins:  No.  That's  right.  What  we  observed,  and  I  would  say 
in  an  almost  differentia!  sense,  was  quite  different  from  what  we 
inferred  from  the  readings  on  the  instruments.  And  I  see  still  a 
discrepancy  between  the  detailed  reentry  mining  observations  from 
Rainier,  and  from  the  general  picture  we  get  from  the  observations 
of  cables  breaking  and  from  the  surface.  I  think  that  discrepancy  still 
exists  to  a  degree.  And  you  identify  it  very  specifically. 

I  would  put  this  point  up,  and  it's  one  that  has  disturbed  me  and 
continues  to  disturb  me.  We  have  only  investigated  in  great  detail 
one  event,  and  that's  Rainier.  We've  never  investigated  in  great 
detail  any  other  one  event.  In  the  first  place  it's  quite  costly.  It  cost 
us  about  as  much  to  do  the  kind  of  post-shot  investigation  that  we 
did  on  Rainier  as  it  did  to  fire  the  shot  in  the  first  place.  So,  it  like 
doubled  the  cost. 

Now,  I  must  say  that  in  recent  years  the  line-of-sight  pipe 
tunnel  explorations  have  in  some  respects  exceeded  the  information 
that  was  learned  from  Rainier.  But  it  is  not  so  much  about  the 
containment  of  the  shot  as  about  the  containment  of  the  pipe,  and 
the  phenomena  associated  with  the  pipe  closure.  When  I  said  we've 
never  explored  another  shot  in  such  detail,  I  meant  in  all  the 
containment  aspects  in  general.  In  other,  detailed  areas,  I  think 
DNA  has  exceeded  Rainier  by  quite  a  bit. 

Carothers:  Well,  you  had  the  moratorium  going  for  you,  Gary. 
People  didn't  have  anything  else  to  do.  We  wanted  to  keep  the 
miners  busy,  we  wanted  to  keep  Gary  Higgins  busy,  and  so  we  let 
them  go  dig  around  in  the  mountain. 

Higgins:  Precisely.  And  keeping  the  miners  occupied  was  a 
very  important  thing.  During  the  moratorium  a  number  of  profes¬ 
sional  people  decided  to  abandon  the  Test  Program.  That  disturbed 
a  lot  of  people  who  felt  an  obligation  to  maintain  the  defense 
posture  that  we  had  because  of  our  nuclear  weapons  capability. 


50 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


And  so  they  asked  themselves,  "How  far  can  this  loss  of  personnel 
go  before  we  lose  the  capability  to  resume,  should  we  decide  to 
resume?" 

There  were  a  number  of  answers  to  the  question,  but  among 
the  answers  that  emerged  was  the  fact  that  there  were  other  skills 
than  physics  and  mathematics  and  chemistry  that  we  would  be 
losing,  and  one  of  those  was  our  mining  capability  and  our  drilling 
capability.  Both  of  those  skills  had  evolved  well  beyond,  and 
different  from,  the  common  industrial  practice.  In  other  words,  any 
miner  wasn't  adequate.  Or  any  driller.  Witness  the  fact  that  we'd 
sat  there  and  turned  to  the  right  with  no  forward  progress  on  that 
first  Rainier  hole  for  two  months  or  so.  It  was  a  question  of  having 
other  kind  of  skills  that  were  as  important  as  the  scientific  skills. 

So,  during  the  moratorium,  we  spent  a  lot  of  effort  trying  to 
understand  what  had  happened  in  the  Rainier  cavity.  The  business 
of  what  goes  on  in  a  cavity  went  through  a  history  like  that  in  a  lot 
of  technical  fields.  There  was  the  first  evaluation,  and  a  simple 
model  was  generated,  or  invented,  or  selected  from  among  a  lot  of 
proposals.  That  model  fit  a  lot  of  observations,  so  we  said,  "Okay, 
we  understand  this  part  of  the  explosion  phenomenology.  We  won't 
devote  much  time  to  doing  a  lot  more  investigations,  because  they 
are  very  difficult  to  do." 

And  they  are  difficult  because  the  stress  levels  within  the  area 
where  the  cavity  is  formed  run  not  just  to  kilobars,  but  to  megabars 
and  above.  So,  the  measurement  techniques  must  be  very  sophis¬ 
ticated.  The  region  that's  involved  is  small,  and  things  are  diverging 
very  rapidly  in  space,  so  any  measurement  instrument  has  to  be  kind 
of  tiny.  And  everything  goes  on  in  extremely  short  periods  of  time, 
so  getting  signals  that  are  meaningful  out  from  that  region  is 
extremely  difficult.  Getting  a  fast  signal  out  means  a  big  co-ax,  and 
a  big  co-ax  means  a  big  void  or  something  like  that  in  the  very  small 
region.  That  is  kind  of  contradictory  to  the  idea  of  measuring  what 
is  happening  in  that  region  without  disturbing  it.  There  are  a  lot  of 
contradictory  requirements,  or  conflicting  requirements,  when  you 
try  to  make  such  measurements. 

Carothers:  In  your  work  on  Rainier  there  were  probably 
several  things  you  wanted  to  do.  Certainly  you  wanted  to  do 
radiochemical  analyses  to  get  the  yield.  What  effort  was  devoted  to 


The  Rainier  Event 


51 


trying  to  understand  what  happened  to  the  rock  materials  them¬ 
selves  under  the  high  pressures  and  high  temperatures  that  had 
existed? 

Higgins:  The  primary  charge  we  had  was  to  be  able  to  do  on 
underground  shots  the  same  measurements  we'd  been  doing  in 
atmospheric  testing.  So,  that  was  the  primary  purpose  of  our 
efforts.  In  order  to  fulfill  that  primary  objective  we  wanted  to  know 
something  about  the  mechanics,  and  the  chemistry,  of  how  the 
samples  we  were  recovering  had  been  created.  The  basic  purpose 
was  still  to  diagnose  the  performance  of  the  explosive,  not  to  know 
how  to  contain  it.  The  containment  concern  really  didn't  come  up 
until  much  later. 

We  were  extremely  curious  about  what  had  happened  to  the 
native  material,  and  we  did  a  lot  of  different  measurements.  One 
of  the  first  things  we  found  on  Rainier  was  a  lot  of  glass,  which  was 
the  tuff  that  had  been  melted  and  then  quenched.  We  did 
radiochemical  analyses  for  a  lot  of  different  chemical  species  to 
determine  how  much  total  rock  had  been  melted,  and  how  well 
mixed  that  melted  rock  was  with  the  device  components  themselves. 
Those  conditions  influenced  how  the  device  components  would 
behave  after  the  shot,  and  what  they  would  be  like  when  we  went 
back  and  found  the  samples.  We  pretty  well  knew,  from  ail  kinds 
of  laboratory  and  atmospheric  test  experience,  what  the  immediate 
surroundings  were  going  to  be,  and  what  temperatures  and  pres¬ 
sures  things  were  going  to  be  heated  to.  It  wasn't  like  working  in 
total  darkness.  We  knew  that  the  initial  temperatures  and  pressures 
were  going  to  be  so  high  that  the  material  present  would  be 
disassociated  into  electrons  and  nuclei,  and  that  there  really  wouldn't 
be  any  material  properties,  other  than  those  of  a  so-called  Fermi  gas. 

Carothers:  That  doesn't  last  long. 

Higgins:  It  doesn't  last  even  a  microsecond.  Some  reports  on 
containment  describe  what's  going  on  in  the  first  microsecond  as  if 
that's  a  very  short  time.  That's  a  long,  long  time  compared  to  some 
of  the  things  that  go  on.  The  Fermi  gas  very  quickly,  in  the  first 
tenth  of  a  microsecond,  probably  has  begun  to  expand  enough  so  a 
genuine  shock  has  developed.  That  shock  is  a  really  strong  shock, 
well  above  a  megabar.  The  rock  is  vaporized  by  it,  and  even  though 
the  gas  may  not  be  fully  ionized,  it's  still  partly  ionized,  at  least  once 
or  twice,  so  the  chemistry's  still  not  important. 


52 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Somewhere  out  about  a  meter  or  two  meters  from  one  kiloton 
enough  energy  has  been  absorbed,  and  there's  been  enough  spheri¬ 
cal  divergence  of  the  shock  wave  so  the  pressure  level  has  gone  down 
to  where  the  kind  of  rock  that's  there  is  important.  In  the  model, 
that  first  simple  minded  model,  what  we  used  to  do  was  say,  "Okay, 
the  first  meter  that  surrounds  the  explosion  is  made  out  of  iron." 
We  had  a  fairly  good  equation  of  state  for  iron,  and  we  knew  what 
pressures  would  be  developed  if  you  shocked  iron  to  ten  megabars. 
So,  we  started  all  our  calculations,  whether  the  detonation  was  in 
limestone,  or  oil  shale,  or  Nevada  tuff,  or  alluvium,  with  iron  out 
to  the  first  meter.  We  put  the  whole  energy  of  the  explosion  into 
that.  Of  course,  if  you  do  that,  for  most  of  the  explosives  we  talk 
about  that  means  the  composition  of  the  explosive  itself  doesn't 
really  make  a  lot  of  difference. 

A  sphere  of  iron  with  a  one  meter  radius  is  like  ten  times  pi 
tons,  so  you've  got  thirty  or  forty  tons  of  iron  to  mix  with  the 
device.  You  mix  in  a  small  number  of  pounds  of  whatever  and  it 
doesn't  make  a  lot  of  difference.  So,  that  assumption  was  very 
useful  for  generating  the  correct  shock  out  in  the  rock  where  we 
could  make  decent  measurements  and  the  coaxial  cables  didn't  get 
banged  so  quick  that  we  couldn't  get  the  signals  out.  They 
confirmed  that  what  we'd  done  by  putting  in  the  meter  of  iron  was 
right.  So,  okay,  what  was  in  that  first  meter  didn't  make  any 
difference. 

All  of  that  model  is  correct,  except  that  after  the  material  has 
been  shocked,  it  does  something.  It's  left  behind  as  very  high 
pressure  atoms  and  electrons,  but  it  doesn't  stay  that  way.  The 
electrons  and  atoms  that  have  been  disassociated  by  the  shock,  and 
other  things,  are  going  to  recombine,  and  they  don't  really  care 
what  form  they  were  in  before  they  were  disassociated.  They  go 
back  to  a  form  that  is  consistent  with  their  environment  at  the  time 
they  are  being  born.  The  electrons  don't  care  that  they  were  in  tuff 
to  start  with;  they're  very  happy  going  back  and  becoming  methane, 
for  instance. 

The  little  bubbles  that  were  frozen  inside  the  glass  on  Rainier 
were  microsamples  of  the  cosmos  in  which  they  were  formed.  You 
don't  know  in  the  stage  of  expansion  when  that  glass  becomes  solid 
and  the  bubbles  were  trapped,  but  you  do  know  that  whenever  it  did 
get  solid,  it  was  a  closed  sample.  So,  the  analysis  of  those  glass 
samples  showed  us  a  number  of  things. 


The  Rainier  Event 


53 


We  took  the  glass,  broke  it  into  littie  chips,  and  examined  them 
under  the  microscope  to  find  which  had  closed  bubbles.  We  put 
those  in  a  vacuum  system,  heated  them,  and  when  the  glass  melted 
the  bubbles  burst,  and  then  we  analyzed  what  the  bubbles  con¬ 
tained.  It  turned  out  that  what  was  in  them  was  mostly  water  vapor, 
which,  I  would  say,  was  not  surprising. 

Carothers:  You  refer  to  the  material  you  recover  from  the 
cavity  as  "glass."  Why  do  you  call  it  that?  It  doesn't  look  like  glass. 

Higgins:  No,  it  doesn't  look  like  what  we  think  of  as  glass,  but 
in  fact  it  is  glass.  We  had  established  that  early  through  some  work 
with  consultants  at  the  Laboratory,  in  several  ways.  One  was  to  take 
some  of  the  initial  material  we  had  recovered  from  Rainier,  and  do 
physical  measurements  on  it;  measure  its  density,  its  index  of 
refraction,  and  so  on. 

When  you  look  at  it  through  a  low  power  microscope,  it  is  just 
like  window  glass.  The  reason,  when  we  look  at  it  in  a  gross  sense, 
that  it  is  all  black  is  that  it  has  a  whole  range  of  size  of  tiny  bubbules 
in  it  that  absorb  all  the  wave  lengths  of  light.  Plus  there  are  some 
inclusions  of  metals,  and  other  things,  if  you  look  at  it  in  a  thin 
section  it  doesn't  look  black  any  more.  First,  it  looks  sort  of  dark 
green.  As  you  get  it  thinner  it  begins  to  look  yellow,  and  then  when 
you  get  it  down  very  thin  it's  perfectly  transparent.  You  can  see 
through  it,  with  the  individual  bubbles  in  it  visible.  Those  bubbles 
are  remnants  of  the  steam  that  was  in  excess  of  that  required  for 
saturation. 

Professor  George  Morey  of  the  United  States  Geological 
Survey,  who  was  then  in  his  late  seventies  or  early  eighties,  was 
intrigued  with  the  whole  of  the  phenomenology  of  the  creation  of 
lava.  He  had  worked  for  many  years  as  a  geochemist,  first  in  the 
Geologic  Survey,  and  then  after  his  retirement,  at  the  Carnegie 
Institute.  Then,  when  they  forced  him  to  retire,  he  went  back  as 
Emeritus  Scientist  for  the  USGS. 

He  was  very  intrigued  with  the  geochemical  processes  that  go 
on  in  ground  water,  and  how  hot  water  around  volcanos  and 
fumaroles  really  transports  earth  from  place  to  place  at  a  very  large 
rate  -  -  a  lot  larger  than  we  mortals,  who  are  here  for  an  instant  in 
geologic  time,  realize.  If  that  water  is  flowing  from  there  to  here, 
it's  also  bringing  along  huge  quantities  of  rock.  And  pretty  soon, 
as  the  water  evaporates  and  goes  away,  the  rock  will  grow  here,  and 


54 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


it  will  grow  in  whatever  form  best  fits  this  environment.  Professor 
Morey  spent  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  retirement  searching  out 
and  quantifying  these  effects. 

Well,  what  was  going  on  in  Rainier,  and  the  underground 
explosions  in  general,  was  a  rapid  speeding  up  all  the  processes  he 
was  interested  in.  So,  he  was  intrigued  by  the  kind  of  glass  we  would 
form  from  an  ash.  Volcanic  tuff  was  spewed  out  of  the  ground  as 
ash.  But  on  Rainier  it  had  recondensed,  after  the  shot,  as  glass.  Why 
did  it  come  out  to  be  glass,  and  not  go  back  to  being  ash?  So  he  got 
involved  in  this  study  of  the  glass. 

One  of  his  students,  George  Kennedy,  from  the  UCLA  Insti¬ 
tute  of  Geophysics,  also  got  involved.  And  there  was  another 
fellow,  named  David  Griggs,  who  had  been  involved  in  the  test 
program  from  before  Hiroshima  and  Nagasaki  He  was  the  principal 
geoscientist  involved  with  the  Air  Force  advisory  panel.  Professor 
Morey,  George  Kennedy,  and  Dave  Griggs  were  involved  in  not  only 
determining  that  glass  was  produced  from  the  condensation  of  the 
molten  rock,  but  also  in  measuring  its  index  of  refraction,  and  the 
amount  of  water  vapor  that  was  dissolved  in  it.  From  that,  and  the 
radius  of  the  cavity,  we  deduced  what  the  steam  pressure  must  have 
been  to  make  that  kind  of  glass. 

To  form  glass  you  need  some  silica  sand.  As  long  as  the  ratio 
of  silica  to  the  other  common  earth  forming  oxides,  such  as 
aluminum  and  calcium  and  magnesium,  is  large,  the  melt  when 
cooled  quickly  from  its  liquid  state,  or  quenched,  will  always  form 
glass.  The  rate  at  which  that  glass  changes  back  to  being  crystal 
silica,  and  alumina,  and  calcium,  depends  on  how  much  silica  there 
is.  The  more  silica  the  longer  it  will  stay  glass,  but  it  will  change. 
That  process  of  changing  from  glass  to  crystalline  form  is  devitrifi¬ 
cation. 

Glass  is  a  metastable  liquid,  but  it  takes  a  long  time  to  devitrify, 
and  for  silica  glasses  that  time  is  measured  in  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  years.  At  the  concentration  of  silica  in  the  tuffs  at  the  Nevada 
Test  Site,  the  glass  would  prefer  to  be  crystalline  quartz  plus 
felspars,  but  the  process  takes  around  five  hundred  thousand  to  a 
million  years.  Those  tuffs,  as  we  know  from  many  lead  isotope  ratio 
studies,  and  the  fact  that  they're  there  as  minerals  and  not  as  glass 


The  Rainier  Event 


55 


today,  are  like  two,  three,  four,  up  to  tens  of  millions  of  years  old. 
Even  so,  there  are  still  remnant  glasses  from  the  original  volcanic 
outpouring.  Not  a  lot,  but  there  are  some. 

A  nuclear  explosion  converts  the  rock  close  around  it  to  glass, 
with  minor,  minor  exceptions.  And  so  the  generic  term  is  that  the 
"glass"  is  the  initially  molten  material,  from  the  shot,  that  cooled 
very  quickly.  The  amount  of  glass  produced  is  like  a  kiloton  per 
kiloton  of  yield,  and  that's  not  too  surprising.  The  energy  in  the 
nuclear  explosion  is  just  about  right  so  one  kiloton  of  energy  will 
make  one  kiloton  of  molten  rock.  And  that's  what  we  find  out. 

Going  back  to  what  goes  on  the  cavity,  the  other  thing  we 
found  in  those  little  bubbles  in  the  glass  was  hydrogen,  and  oxygen, 
and  a  little  bit  of  carbon  monoxide,  and  a  little  bit  of  carbon  dioxide. 
There  really  isn't  much  carbon  in  the  tuff;  there  wasn't  in  the  Rainier 
ground  zero  area.  But,  the  timbers  that  held  up  the  tunnel  were 
wood,  and  all  the  electronics  had  rubber  and  plastic  insulation,  and 
plastic  foam  as  a  dielectric.  If  you  added  it  all  up,  there  was  enough 
carbon  in  the  environment  to  explain  the  carbon  dioxide  in  the 
bubbles. 

Now,  how  did  the  carbon  get  from  plastic  to  carbon  dioxide? 
Well,  if  you  have  this  big  sea  of  electrons  and  atoms,  the  atom 
doesn't  know  whether  it  came  from  plastic  or  rock.  A  lot  of  what's 
around  is  water,  which  is  hydrogen  and  oxygen.  So,  the  carbon  has 
a  high  probability  of  combining  with  either  oxygen,  or  even  more 
probably  with  hydrogen,  because  there  are  two  hydrogens  for  every 
oxygen,  so  hydrogen  is  the  major  materia!  around.  So,  when  you 
put  hydrogen  with  carbon,  you  get  methane.  The  carbons  have 
some  affinity  for  each  other,  so  a  lot  of  them  go  around  as  two's. 
And  when  two's  go  together,  then  you  get  ethane.  Sometimes 
there's  an  oxygen,  so  that  makes  methyl  alcohol,  or  methyl 
formaldahyde.  A  whole  suite  of  hydrocarbons  gets  formed,  not 
because  they  were  there  as  hydrocarbons  to  begin  with,  but  because 
it's  probable  that  they're  going  to  become  that  in  this  sea  of  mostly 
oxygen  and  hydrogen  with  the  occasional  carbon. 

More  frequently  than  carbon  there's  a  silicon,  or  an  aluminum 
here  and  there,  but  not  many.  For  every  four  oxygens  there's  one 
aluminum,  or  iron,  or  silicon.  So  they  go  back  together,  and  then 
as  they  cool  they  continue  to  react  with  each  other.  One  of  the 
things  that  Russ  Duff  has  noted,  and  I  think  he  is  onto  a  very 


56  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

important  clue,  is  that  what  is  happening  in  the  cavity,  even  at  long 
times,  like  months,  is  that  these  gases  are  finding  each  other  and 
reacting. 

A  not  very  probable  reaction,  but  an  easy  example,  is  where  a 
methane  finds  a  water  molecule,  a  steam  molecule,  and  reacts  with 
it.  The  oxygen  from  the  water  will  go  with  the  carbon  in  the 
methane,  and  two  hydrogens  will  get  formed.  This  happens  at  only 
very,  very  high  temperatures;  as  the  temperature  cools,  that 
reaction  goes  the  other  way.  Water  and  methane  are  the  natural 
products,  hydrogen  and  carbon  monoxide  are  the  starting  reactants. 
That  particular  reaction  occurs  at  high  temperatures,  but  stops 
abruptly  at  like  1  300  degrees  centigrade. 

If  you  analyze  a  lot  of  these  products,  you  can  look  at  the  ratios 
of  the  chemical  compounds  and  derive  a  temperature  where  they 
must  have  been  "frozen."  They  call  it  "frozen  equilibrium," 
because  the  rates  of  reaction  are  exponential.  There's  an  old  rule 
of  thumb  which  we  chemists  use,  which  is  not  quite  accurate,  but  it 
demonstrates  the  principle:  for  each  ten  degrees  increase  in  tem¬ 
perature,  you  double  the  rate  of  reaction.  So,  it  doesn't  take  a  very 
big  change  in  temperature  to  have  a  reaction  proceed  extremely 
rapidly,  as  in  seconds  or  milliseconds,  or  extremely  slowly,  as  in 
hours  or  days.  That  change  can  take  place  as  the  temperature 
changes  a  hundred  degrees  or  so. 

The  simplest  ratio  that  gives  a  temperature  is  the  carbon 
monoxide  to  carbon  dioxide  ratio  at  a  given  pressure  of  oxygen  and 
hydrogen.  If  you  look  at  the  ratio  of  hydrogen  to  oxygen  to  water, 
that  gives  another  method  of  calculating  a  temperature.  If  those  two 
temperatures  disagree,  then  you  have  a  phenomenon  you  have  to 
explain.  It  turns  out  they  don't  usually  disagree,  and  they  haven't 
in  the  tests  where  we  have  made  measurements.  They  all  give  a 
temperature  which  is  consistent  with  the  cavity  sample  that  we  had 
frozen  out  in  the  bubbles  on  Rainier,  which  was  about  900  to  a 
1 000  degrees  centigrade.  That  also  turns  out  to  be  about  where  the 
melting,  or  softening  point  of  the  rock  is.  So,  all  of  this  holds 
together,  sort  of. 

In  retrospect  it's  what  we  should  have  expected,  but  we  still 
tend  to  treat  the  material  that  the  shockwave  traverses  near  the 
explosion  as  if  it  were  iron,  or  rock,  or  aluminum,  or  plastic.  We 
forget  that  the  world,  and  the  environment  around  the  explosion, 


The  Rainier  Event 


57 


if  you  average  all  the  stuff  together,  is  almost  half  water.  Normal 
tuff,  they  say,  is  fifteen  percent  water,  twenty  percent  water.  That's 
by  weight.  The  molecular  weight  of  water  is  eighteen.  The 
molecular  weight  of  rock  is  like  sixty  or  seventy.  So,  if  you  take 
twenty  percent  of  something  with  a  molecular  weight  of  eighteen, 
and  mix  it  with  eighty  percent  of  something  with  a  molecular  weight 
of  seventy,  the  result  is  that  there  are  more  molecules  of  water  than 
molecules  of  rock.  And  so,  if  something  is  going  to  react,  the  odds 
are  just  about  even  that  it  is  going  to  react  with  something  from 
water,  and  something  from  rock.  So,  anything  that's  going  to 
happen  is  dominated  by  the  water. 

One  thingwe  found  on  Rainier  was  some  fragments  of  glass  that 
were  formed  by  having  been  blown  down  a  fracture,  which  then 
squished  off.  We  found  such  a  fracture,  and  again  we  didn't 
recognize  its  importance.  We  had  this  model  of  a  smooth,  round 
cavity  with  a  glass  lining;  we  ignored  the  fact  that  at  two  and  a  half 
cavity  radii  was  a  fracture  containing  some  glass. 

We  found  this  fracture,  and  said,  "Isn't  that  interesting?  I 
wonder  how  that  glass  got  down  there.  Well,  it  must  have  been  a 
fracture."  And,  everybody  said,  "Yes,  it  must  have  been  a 
fracture."  But  in  all  of  the  literature  you  don't  find  mention  of  the 
glass-lined  cavity  having  spikes  radiating  out  from  it,  containing 
products  from  the  center.  In  the  model  we  mentally  smoothed  the 
ball  off,  and  forgot  that  there  were  fractures  from  it. 

The  point  was  that  in  those  fractures  were  glass  fragments  that 
were  frozen  out  while  probably  it  was  still  in  contact  with  the  cavity, 
and  they  had  elemental  iron,  elemental  copper,  elemental  uranium 
in  them.  These  metals  are  extremely  reactive.  With  this  sea  of 
oxygen  atoms  we  should  have  said,  "They  shouldn't  be  there."  But 
they  were  there.  Again,  we  ignored  that.  It  was  the  exception  that 
should  have  said  our  general  model  was  too  gross.  Chemically,  a  sea 
of  electrons  is  about  the  most  reducing  thing  there  can  be.  In  fact, 
you  couldn't  get  the  average  chemist  to  comprehend  what  a  mole 
of  electrons,  just  electrons,  would  do. 

So,  the  clues  were  there.  When  the  cavity  forms  dynamically, 
this  high  stress  shockwave  goes  out,  running  way  ahead  of  the 
material.  And  we  know,  for  example,  that  shock  velocity  is  greater 
than  particle  velocity,  almost  no  matter  how  high  the  stress  level  of 


58 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


the  shockwave  is.  So,  as  the  shock  goes  out  from  the  explosion 
center,  it  runs  ahead  of  the  material,  but  the  material  that  is  behind 
it  is  moving  at  still  a  pretty  high  velocity.  The  shockwave  is 
irreversible;  it  leaves  a  portion  of  its  energy  behind  as  heat,  which 
causes  this  ionization-disassociation  that's  going  on.  There  are  more 
electrons  around  than  anything  else,  so  everything  wants  to  be 
reduced  to  the  elemental  state,  and  then  start  combining.  Most  of 
the  atoms  that  are  present  are  oxygen,  so  most  things  end  up  as 
oxides.  It  may  sound  contradictory  to  say  that  oxides  are  reduced, 
but  carbon  monoxide  is  the  reduced  form,  relative  to  carbon 
dioxide,  and  elemental  carbon,  or  graphite,  or  diamond,  is  even 
more  reduced. 

So,  the  state  of  the  cavity  is  highly  reducing,  and  so,  for 
example,  if  there  is  copper  around  the  copper  will  stay  pretty  much 
as  elemental  copper.  You  don't  see  big  globs  of  it  because  it's  ail 
vapor,  and  when  it  condenses,  it  condenses  a  few  atoms  at  a  time, 
dispersed  throughout  the  glass.  The  black  color  of  the  glass  is  not 
due  to  radiation,  and  it's  not  due  to  carbon;  it's  mostly  due  to 
elemental  lead  and  iron  in  the  form  of  single,  or  a  few,  atoms. 

What  we  should  have  learned,  and  should  have  known  from  the 
Rainier  fractures  is  that  there  was  a  period  of  time  when  the  cavity 
was  growing,  the  boundaries  were  open,  fractures  were  going  out, 
and  the  volume  being  interacted  with  was  considerably  larger  than 
that  which  we  found  when  we  calculated  the  steam  pressure,  and 
calculated  50,  or  55,  W  to  the  1  /3rd  as  the  cavity  radius. 


59 


3 


The  Moratorium  and  the  Return  to  Testing 

The  1958-1961  moratorium  followed  Hardtack  II.  During  the 
moratorium  Los  Alamos  drilled  some  stockpile  holes  in  Yucca,  and 
Livermore  continued  with  excavations  in  B  tunnel  and  E  tunnel,  in 
Rainier  Mesa.  Considerable  reentry  work  and  explorations  were 
done  at  the  site  of  the  Rainier  event.  And,  little  known  until  many 
years  later,  a  series  of  experiments  took  place  which  contributed  to 
the  knowledge  about  containment. 

Brownlee:  There  was  something  that  went  on  during  the 
moratorium  which  used  to  be  supersecret  but  isn't  anymore.  There 
have  been  announcements  about  it,  and  newspaper  stories.  That 
was  a  series  of  one-point  kind  of  experiments,  and  so  we  had  a  rather 
active  underground  experimental  program  here  at  Los  Alamos.  You 
didn't  see  towers,  and  you  didn't  see  smoke,  and  you  didn't  see  a 
lot  of  things.  But  out  in  TA-49  we  put  things  down  holes,  and  fired 
them. 

The  yields  were  just  the  high  explosive  yield,  essentially,  but  it 
was  during  that  period  1  saw  my  first  stemming  collapses,  from  a 
whole  series  of  those  things.  It  always  happened.  We'd  shoot  one 
of  these  things  off,  and  a  little  while  later  the  stemming  would  fall 
down  the  hole.  We  were  doing  them  in  tuff,  so  the  holes  tended  to 
stand,  and  the  stemming  would  go  down.  So,  it  was  during  the 
moratorium  that  I  began  to  appreciate  chimneys,  and  stemming 
falls. 

Bob  Newman  and  1  spent  an  appreciable  time  fussing  about 
scaling  laws.  How  big  a  cavity  would  we  make?  How  much 
stemming  did  we  have  to  have  to  keep  everything  contained?  The 
difficulty  was  that  the  number  of  people  who  knew  about  that 
program  in  Los  Alamos  was  minimal.  In  ]  Division  there  was 
Westerfelt,  Newman,  Campbell,  and  a  few  others,  including  myself. 
And  of  course,  in  W  Division  there  were  the  people  who  were 
making  the  devices. 

Because  of  these  experiments  I  continued  to  get  an  education 
in  containment  during  the  moratorium,  which  if  you  stop  to  think 
about  it  is  odd.  But  it  was  kept  so  close  that  only  Campbell  and 


60 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Newman  would  talk  to  me,  and  they  didn't  talk  to  many  others  at 
all.  I  was  not  allowed  to  know  very  many  details.  The  part  of  it  that 
I  knew  was  that  we  were  doing  things  that  required  stemming  and 
containment,  and  we  didn't  dare  make  a  mistake.  It  had  to  be 
contained,  and  we  had  therefore  to  be  super-conservative.  It  wasn't 
like  the  Test  Site.  If  something  floats  around  here  in  Los  Alamos, 
everybody  in  town  knows  it.  There's  no  way  you  can  escape  it.  The 
argument  was  that  we  didn't  dare  go  to  the  Test  Site.  I  thought  that 
was  a  bit  odd,  but  that  was  my  understanding.  We  had  to  do  it  here 
because  the  Russians  would  know  we  were  doing  something  if  we 
went  somewhere  else. 

So,  at  Los  Alamos  we  were  learning  a  little  something  about 
underground  containment.  We  talked  a  lot  about  scaling  laws.  We 
debated  whether  we  needed  a  depth  of  burial  where  there  wouldn't 
be  a  crater,  or  what  it  was  we  did  need.  My  recollection  is  we  kept 
debating  what  it  meant,  but  with  people  like  Campbell  in  the  works 
those  kinds  of  subtleties  were  ofttimes  scorned.  Obviously  what  we 
meant  was  that  nothing  comes  out.  So,  at  those  very  early  times  we 
had  already,  in  a  way,  defined  containment  as  not  one  atom  out. 
There  was  nobody  who  told  us  to  do  it  that  way. 

The  scaling  laws  you  could  find  in  the  literature  were,  of 
course,  for  chemical  explosions,  which  is  actually  what  we  were 
dealing  with,  in  a  practical  sense.  So  they  were  relevant,  in  a  way. 
As  a  result  of  all  that  we  came  to  '6 1  with  the  conviction  that  400 
feet  times  the  1  /3rd  power  of  the  yield  in  kilotons  was  conservative, 
and  worked. 

In  summary,  I  would  say  that  more  happened  during  that 
moratorium  that's  relevant  to  containment  than  you  might  think. 
Even  though  it  was  hidden,  and  there  weren't  very  many  people 
involved,  there  was  a  continuation  of  thought.  I  think  we  were  more 
ready  to  test  underground  than  people  remember. 

There  were  other  activities,  at  the  Test  Site,  which  contributed 
to  the  ability  to  resume  testing,  should  the  need  arise.  Interestingly 
enough,  this  effort,  on  the  part  of  both  Laboratories,  went  into  the 
preparation  of  underground  sites,  although  the  Nuclear  Test  Ban 
Treaty  was  still  several  years  in  the  future. 


The  Moritorium  and  the  Return  to  Testing 


61 


Carothers:  During  the  moratorium  Livermore  had  the  LRL- 
Nevada  people  working  at  the  Test  Site.  They  got  some  amounts 
of  money,  and  I  presume  the  Los  Alamos  testing  organization  did 
too.  The  Livermore  people  were  digging  tunnels  against  the  time 
when  there  might  be  something  to  do  with  them.  What  were  the  Los 
Alamos  people  doing? 

Brownlee:  We  stockpiled  some  vertical  holes.  When  the 
moratorium  was  over  we  had  holes  in  which  we  could  shoot,  right 
away.  We  had  made  the  decision  early  on,  I  think,  that  our  vertical 
holes  would  take  a  48-inch  diameter  casing.  To  my  memory  they 
were  all  drilled  to  accommodate  such  a  casing. 

We  were  in  alluvium  in  Area  3,  and  the  alluvium  we  saw  was 
pretty  loose.  When  we  drilled  a  hole,  there  were  layers  of  what  I 
call  hourglass  sand  -  -  it  would  flow  like  the  sand  in  an  hourglass. 
Any  fool  knew  that  you  would  have  to  case  those  holes,  or  they 
would  just  fill  up,  particularly  if  they  were  going  to  stand  there  for 
a  long  time.  And  so,  there  was  a  policy  here  that  you  had  to  shoot 
in  a  cased  hole,  because  you  would  lose  the  bomb  and  everything 
else  if  you  didn't.  After  we  resumed  testing  we  used  to  have  that 
argument  with  Livermore,  regularly. 

Carothers:  Well,  Livermore  shot  in  cased  holes  for  some  years. 
It  didn't  occur  to  anybody  to  ask,  "Los  Alamos  drills  holes  and  cases 
them.  Why  do  they  do  that?  We're  in  a  different  area.  Is  it  the 
same?  Should  we  do  that?"  So,  Livermore  cased  holes.  Why?  Well, 
because  Los  Alamos  did,  and  that's  the  way  it  was  done.  I  think  that 
is  an  interesting  example  of  something  being  done  in  one  place  in 
one  way  for  a  particular  reason,  and  that  becomes  dogma.  In 
different  place  at  a  different  time  the  same  things  are  done  without 
regard  to  the  fact  that  it  is  different  place,  and  other  ways  might  be 
better. 

Brownlee:  That's  right.  Had  we  started  up  on  Pahute  mesa,  for 
example,  the  dogma  would  have  been  utterly  different,  I  think.  In 
Area  3  we  did  have  the  sand  flow.  In  one  of  the  shafts  we  put  down 
later,  the  hourglass  sand  trickled  down  between  the  boards  of  the 
lagging  for  three  or  four  months.  It  was  a  steady  little  stream,  just 
like  an  hourglass.  I  don't  think  Livermore  has  ever  seen  anything 
like  that  in  the  north  part  of  the  valley. 


62 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Roy  Miller  was  the  drilling  superintendent  for  Livermore  for 
many  years,  and  had  a  different  view. 

Miller:  The  problems  that  LASL  had,  and  we  had,  on  several 
holes,  was  that  the  alluvium-tuff  contact  is  where  they  tended  to 
cave  in.  There  are  places  where  that  sand  zone  acts  like  a  fluid.  It 
just  pours  in  there  like  sand  in  an  hourglass. 

We  have  the  same  zone,  only  it's  deeper  than  in  the  Los  Alamo 
area.  As  you  get  up  in  the  northern  part  of  Yucca  Flat,  we've  had 
dozens  of  holes  that  caved  in  at  the  alluvium-tuff  contact.  We've 
repaired  a  bunch  of  them  and  used  them;  filled  them  full  of  cement 
and  drilled  back  through. 

To  give  you  an  example  of  how  massive  those  cave-ins  are, 
there  was  a  hole  called  lOr,  back  when  we  were  drilling  with  air- 
foam  direct  circulation.  We  drilled  the  hole  to  1600  feet,  pulled 
the  drilling  assembly  out  of  the  hole,  ran  a  caliper  log  all  the  way  to 
the  bottom,  1 600  feet,  and  were  logging  up.  When  the  caliper  log 
was  at  about  400  feet  -  -  you  run  the  caliper  log  from  the  bottom 
up  -  -  it  was  like  an  explosion  had  occurred.  Air  roared  out  of  the 
hole  like  a  volcano.  I  wasn't  there,  but  the  stories  that  were  told 
about  that.  .  .  It  broke  all  the  arms  off  the  caliper  log,  but  they 
pulled  it  on  out.  Didn't  lose  it.  They  repaired  the  caliper  log,  and 
went  back  in  to  1 050  feet,  so  they  had  lost  600  feet  of  hole.  This 
was  a  sixty-four  inch  hole,  and  essentially  this  was  instantaneous. 
They  ran  the  bit  back  in,  cleaned  it  out  without  difficulty,  all  the  way 
to  1650.  Then  we  pulled  the  bit  out,  went  back  in  with  the  caliper 
log,  and  it  stopped  at  1050.  It  did  that  two  more  times. 

It  was  that  hourglass  sand  that  LASL  keeps  talking  about.  The 
first  time  it  was  a  massive  cave-in.  The  other  two  times  it  was  very 
slow.  They  weren't  aware  it  happened  until  they  went  back  in.  The 
same  thing  happened  in  Area  2  on  the  west  side  of  the  road.  We 
drilled  down  to  below  the  water  table,  and  set  a  liner  to  have  a  dry 
hole.  It  caved  in  above  the  liner  and  filled  the  liner  up.  We  went 
in,  cemented  it  up,  drilled  back  down,  and  fortunately  hit  the  liner. 
Anyway,  those  formations  that  LASL  talk  about  down  there  occur 
up  in  Area  2  and  10,  only  at  a  deeper  depth. 

Brownlee:  I  think  we  did  cased  holes  in  Area  3  for  perfectly 
rational  reasons,  in  light  of  the  things  we  were  seeing.  It  was  only 
after  we  had  this  big  quarrel  with  Livermore,  some  years  later,  after 


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63 


they  went  to  uncased  holes  and  were  pointing  fingers  at  us  for 
spending  too  much  money  casing  holes,  that  we  really  examined  the 
fact  that  even  in  the  alluvium  in  Area  3  the  holes  lasted  a  long  time 
if  you  didn't  mess  around  in  them.  That  was  very  hard  for  Campbell 
to  accept. 

Also,  during  the  moratorium,  there  was  a  doctrine  to  keep  the 
testing  community  intact. 

Carothers:  You  might  almost  call  it  a  readiness  program. 

Brownlee:  Yes,  you  might.  And  the  way  they  planned  to  keep 
it  intact  was  to  let  people  work  on  whatever  they  wanted  to.  We  had 
said,  before  the  moratorium,  that  during  the  moratorium  we  would 
rework  and  reduce  all  the  data  we  had  collected  in  those  frantic 
years  of  tests.  In  fact  that  really  didn't  happen.  There  were  a  few 
people  who  worked  on  data,  but  there  were  people  they  didn't  want 
to  lose  who  didn't  want  to  work  on  data.  They  were  allowed  to  work 
on  other  things,  so  in  truth,  even  though  people  were  around,  they 
had  other  interests  and  evolved  to  other  programs. 

And  so,  when  the  moratorium  was  over  and  we  went  back  to 
testing  in  '6 1 ,  we  really  had,  it's  fair  to  say,  a  different  set  of  people. 
Not  entirely  of  course,  but  there  were  different  groupings  of 
people,  and  so  there  was  not  a  lot  of  carryover  from  the  things  we 
did  in  '57  and  '58,  as  far  as  containment  was  concerned,  into  the 
'61  time-frame. 

Louis  Wouters,  by  1 958,  was  one  of  the  senior  scientists  in  the 
Livermore  testing  program.  He  remained  with  the  program  until  his 
retirement.  As  with  the  comments  of  John  Foster  cited  after,  his 
remarks  do  not  have  to  do  with  containment,  but  they  are  interesting 
to  consider  in  the  light  of  Bob  Brownlee’s  words  about  maintaining 
a  testing,  or  containment  capability  when  there  is  nothing  to  test,  or 
to  contain. 

Wouters:  The  day  the  moratorium  started,  L  Division  ceased 
to  exist  in  the  minds  of  management.  What  do  we  need  these  people 
for?  We  have  no  tests  to  shoot.  The  general  attitude  we  lived  with 
for  almost  a  year  was,  "Well,  we're  paying  them,  aren't  they  happy 
with  that?  We  haven't  fired  them,  after  all.  Good  God,  what  are 
they  complaining  about?  They  haven't  got  anything  to  do  except 
plan,  and  think,  and  look  a  old  data.  That  seems  to  us  that  is  an  an 
idyllic  situation."  Well,  the  kind  of  guys  we  had  at  that  time  in  Test 


64 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Division  were  a  bit  more  motivated  and  a  bit  more  ambitious  than 
that,  ambitious  in  the  technical  sense.  They  wanted  to  go  out  and 
do  things.  They  were  young  men,  and  they  wanted  to  do  things. 
They  didn't  like  being  cooped  up  in  an  office. 

The  first  year  there  were  a  number  of  things  to  clean  up.  There 
was  data  from  Hardtack  II,  and  also  Hardtack  I,  to  get  into  some  kind 
of  shape.  Only  about  half  of  that  work  actually  got  done,  because 
there  was  no  interest  from  the  design  divisions,  none  whatever. 

I  think  it  was  in  1 959  that  I  went  over  to  England  to  look  into 
a  number  of  things  connected  with  the  Joint  Working  Group  we  had 
with  them,  and  also  go  to  one  of  the  photomultiplier  plants  of  EMI 
to  see  what  they  had  to  offer.  The  people  at  AWRE  were  very  nice, 
and  they  took  me  through  their  test  program  building  and  their 
laboratories.  And  let  me  tell  you,  you  think  we  were  in  trouble. 
Any  of  the  offices  that  had  anybody  in  them  -  -  and  there  weren't 
many,  there  were  a  lot  of  empty  offices  -  -  had  a  zombie.  There  was 
just  no  motivation.  There  was  one  guy  who  was  excited,  because  he 
was  working  on  image  converter  replacements  for  cameras,  and  he 
was  able  to  use  it  on  HE  shots.  Ail  the  others,  they  were  just  sitting 
there,  waiting  for  the  worm  to  turn,  or  whatever.  It  was  dreadful. 

In  retrospect,  what  it  tells  you  is  that  it  is  not  unique  to  us  when 
something  like  that  happens.  It  seems  to  be  a  universal  kind  of 
syndrome.  They  don't  want  to  spend  money  on  us  because  they 
don't  see  the  point.  I,  at  that  time,  with  a  vengeance,  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  if  you  don't  have  anything  worthwhile  for  people  to 
do,  close  the  program  down,  put  them  on  something  else  with  a  long 
string,  and  if  the  need  arises,  pull  them  back.  They'll  be  happier  and 
more  useful  to  you  than  if  you  let  them  sit  and  rot  in  their  offices. 

John  Foster  was  the  Director  of  the  Livermore  Laboratory  in 
1963,  when  the  Nuclear  Test  Ban  Treaty  was  signed.  One  of  the 
things  that  was  considered  to  be  important  when  the  Treaty  was 
signed  was  that  there  should  be  a  readiness  program  -  -  a  formal 
program  to  maintain  a  capability  to  resume  atmospheric  testing 
should  such  testing,  for  whatever  reason,  become  necessary.  The 
following  words  by  Johnny  Foster  relate  to  that  readiness,  not  to 
containment. 


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65 


Foster:  I  can  remember,  when  we  got  to  the  atmospheric  test 
ban,  going  to  the  Joint  Chiefs  of  Staff  and  trying  to  argue  for  the  four 
safeguards  that  had  been  worked  out  with  Scoop  Jackson.  The  day 
I  made  this  pitch  to  the  JCS  was  the  day  that  Curtis  LeMay  was,  I 
think.  Acting  Chairman.  I  went  through  the  four  safeguards,  and 
the  one  safeguard  that  LeMay  hung  up  on  was  the  one  of  readiness. 
He  said  to  me,  "You  will  never  be  able  to  maintain  readiness."  I  was 
absolutely  thunderstruck.  Here  was  the  guy  who  had  created  the 
Strategic  Air  Command  that  had  maintained  readiness,  and  he  was 
telling  me,  "You  will  not  be  able  to  maintain  readiness."  I  was  too 
shocked  to  ask  him  why. 

He  was  dead  right.  Only  a  few  years  later  I  was  working  in  the 
Pentagon,  (Ed.  -  -  as  Director,  Defense  Research  and  Engineering) 
and  cancelling  the  very  programs  that  I  had  fought  for.  I  was 
cancelling  them  because  the  plans  were  made  up  by  people  who 
didn't  understand  what  they  were  doing.  The  people  who  did  had 
left  to  go  work  on  things  that  would  be  more  productive.  And,  if 
the  plans  didn't  make  any  sense,  you  just  simply  couldn't  afford  to 
keep  pouring  money  into  them. 

There  were  some  experiments  that  could  be  done  during  the 
moratorium.  In  particular,  the  were  a  number  of  high  explosive 
experiments  done  to  look  at  crater  formation  from  various  yields  of 
explosives  in  various  media.  One  notable  such  experiment  was  the 
Scooter  detonation,  which  was  done  at  the  Test  Site.  It  involved  the 
detonation  of  500  tons  of  TNT  which  was  stacked  in  a  spherical 
shape  at  a  depth  of  1 25  feet.  One  of  the  problems  with  Scooter  was 
that  when  the  signal  to  fire  was  sent,  the  TNT  did  not  ignite  and  so 
there  was  no  detonation. 

Bob  Bass,  of  Sandia,  was  the  project  officer  for  the  various 
ground  response  measurements  that  were  to  made. 

Bass:  We  started  putting  the  HE  in  the  ground  in  May  or  June. 
That  million  pounds  of  TNT  had  to  be  loaded  down  125  feet.  We 
could  never  do  that  today.  For  example,  one  of  the  problems 
they're  having  right  now  with  the  Chemical  Kiloton  is  how  to  have 
a  safety  plan  for  transporting  the  ammonium  nitrate  from  Mercury 
out  to  Area  1  2.  Don  Larson  had  one  of  his  people  find  out  how  they 
transported  gasoline  on  the  Site,  so  they  could  use  that  plan.  Turns 
out,  there  is  no  safety  plan  for  transporting  gasoline,  or  flammable 


66 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


material  on  the  Test  Site,  on  the  Mercury  highway.  That's  okay,  but 
you  can't  move  ammonium  nitrate,  because  people  have  thought 
about  it.  And  that's  the  current  kind  of  stuff  we're  stuck  with. 

Anyway,  we  transported  all  the  HE  for  Scooter,  a  million 
pounds,  down  from  Hawthorne  in  twenty  ton  loads  on  commercial 
trucks.  It  came  in  blocks  -  -  it  had  all  been  melted  and  cast. 
Hawthorne  had  so  much  of  that  stuff  that  it  was  unbelievable.  We 
also  had  a  whole  bunch  of  spheres  made  up,  and  Sandia  has  used 
them  for  containment  tests  ever  since  -  -  two  thousand  pounds  down 
to  eight  pounds. 

Well,  we  put  in  ail  of  our  instrumentation.  We  had  a  trailer 
nearby  that  had  a  revetement  around  it  to  keep  the  air  blast  from 
hurting  it,  and  the  rocks  from  falling  on  it.  In  addition  to  our 
instrumentation  we  provided  the  electronics  and  the  place  to  record 
and  handle  the  firing  system  performance,  and  people's  checkouts 
of  ail  that.  I  was  not  responsible  for  the  firing,  but  in  a  sense  I  was 
involved  because  I  helped  hook  up  the  firing  set.  Bernie  Shoemaker 
did  it,  and  I  helped  him  with  that.  Scooter  was  to  be  fired  with  a 
pentalite  booster  block  in  the  center  of  the  charge.  That  block  was 
put  in  when  the  sphere  was  halfway  installed.  The  detonators  were 
sent  up  from  Albuquerque,  and  they  were  supposedly  war  reserve 
detonators  to  be  used  with  a  regular  firing  set,  and  the  people  who 
did  this  were  the  people  who  would  ordinarily  do  a  regular  test,  a 
regular  operation.  There  were  extra  dets  for  backups,  and  so  on. 

The  trouble  was  somebody  sent  out  sugar  loads.  They  were 
dummy  dets  that  didn't  have  any  booster  in  them.  There  was  no 
active  final  little  blue  booster  to  set  off  the  pentalite;  they  just  had 
the  little  wires  across  the  back.  These  were  what  was  put  in. 
Everything  was  fine,  except  there  was  no  explosive  in  the  dets.  We 
found  out,  after  they  were  in,  and  the  HE  was  on  top  of  them,  what 
had  happened. 

So,  they  sent  out  some  more  dets,  of  the  same  type.  We  took 
them  down  to  our  trailer  and  said,  "Let's  fire  these  things  and  see 
what  happens."  Bob  Burton  was  in  charge  of  doing  this.  The 
thought  was,  could  we  put  enough  energy  in  there,  to  that  little 
wire,  that  we  would  get  the  pentalite  to  go.  That  was  the  idea,  and 
we  tried.  And  so  we  proceeded  on.  On  shot  day  Neal  Thompston, 
then  head  of  AWRE  was  there,  and  whoever  was  head  of  the  Atomic 
Energy  Commission  at  the  time  was  there.  Everybody  was  there. 


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67 


Carothers:  What  you're  telling  me,  if  I  understand  you 
correctly  is  .  .  . 

Bass:  That  we  knew  damn  well  it  wouldn't  go.  We  would  have 
been  stunned  if  it  had  gone.  That  would  have  been  the  surprise  of 
surprises.  We  knew  it  wasn't  going  to  go,  but  we  wanted  to  try  it, 
because  there  wasn't  anything  else  to  do.  The  explosives  were  all 
stemmed  in,  and  it  would  have  been  a  terrible  job  to  try  to  get  them 
out.  And,  as  we  expected,  it  didn't  go. 

An  investigation  group  was  set  up,  and  Mel  Cook,  a  Utah 
explosive  expert,  was  called  in  to  head  the  committee  to  see  what 
to  do.  They  met  and  met  and  met,  and  decided  there  was  only  one 
approach,  and  that  was  to  melt  our  way  back  down.  So  they  set  up 
a  group  to  do  this,  and  an  explosive  safety  board  to  supervise  it.  We 
could  never  do  this  today,  never  in  a  million  years. 

What  we  did  was  to  put  a  safety  perimeter  around  the  shot, 
which  was  established  as  soon  as  it  didn't  fire.  About  halfway  back 
toward  the  Area  1 0  highway  where  the  access  was  to  the  area,  we 
set  up  a  remote  control  area  to  remotely  drill  back.  We  moved  a 
drill  rig  in,  drilled  down  to  the  top  of  the  HE,  remotely  done.  When 
we  got  to  the  top  of  the  HE,  then  we  put  in  a  steel  billet,  which  had 
hot  water  piped  to  it  -  - 1  don't  think  it  was  steam;  I  think  it  was  just 
hot  water  -  -  to  melt  our  way  back  down,  through  the  explosive,  to 
the  center.  When  this  was  done,  the  guts  of  the  billet  were  pulled 
out,  and  a  pentalite  booster  block  was  lowered  inside  this  billet, 
which  now  sat  in  the  middle  of  the  Scooter  charge. 

I  was  scared  to  death  of  the  whole  operation,  but  we  were  out 
there  monitoring  all  the  time.  We  were  also  worrying  very  much 
about  our  instrumentation  cables,  because  we  had  all  these  storms 
and  rainy  periods.  We  were  using  white  field  wire,  which  was  just 
laying  out  on  top  of  the  ground.  It  wasn't  waterproof  wiring  at  all, 
so  we  ended  up  with  almost  complete  shorts  in  all  of  our  cabling,  in 
addition  to  the  shorts  in  all  the  amplifiers,  which  were  ruined. 

So  we  sat  there,  burning  out  all  our  cabling,  all  this  time.  And 
we  also  had  some  cabling  that  went  into  the  HE  to  measure  the  HE 
burning  rate.  There  were  concerns  about  how  much  current  we 
could  put  into  the  cables  and  not  be  a  danger  to  the  HE,  and  all  that. 
So,  we  had  to  monitor  the  things  very  carefully.  A  lot  of  thought 
went  into  it.  We  sat  there  with  low  currents,  just  burning  out  these 


68 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


cables  for  three  months.  We  were  in  the  danger  area,  burning  out 
our  cable  the  whole  damn  time.  And  they  dried  out  finally.  All  but 
the  pressure  measurements. 

So,  what  did  we  end  up  with?  We  ended  up  with  a  lot  of  radial 
accelerometer  data  that  was  outstanding.  We  ended  up  with  some 
good  horizontal  velocity  gauge  data.  We  were  using  the  old  SRI- 
Sandia  DX  velocity  gauge,  which  was  capable  of  outstanding  mea¬ 
surements.  It's  not  used  anymore,  because  it's  far  too  hard  to  use. 
There  were  some  surface  measurements  too.  We  made  some 
surface  velocity  measurements,  and  there  were  all  kinds  of  photog¬ 
raphy  done.  Scooter  was  really  a  very  good  experiment. 

Carothers:  There  were  a  number  of  HE  shots  during  the 
moratorium. 

Bass:  Yes,  and  Sandia  was  doing  all  of  those.  There  was  the 
Buckboard  series  in  hard  rock,  for  instance,  during  that  period.  And 
there  were  a  lot  at  Fort  Peck.  There  is  a  lot  of  stuff  in  the  literature 
on  those,  but  there  is  very,  very  little  instrumentation  data.  Mostly 
there  are  photographs  of  before  and  after,  and  throwout  measure¬ 
ments  -  -  sticky-paper  trays,  and  things  like  that.  Vortman  put  out 
beads  all  over  everywhere,  and  they  counted  beads  in  various 
samples  they  took  after  the  shot.  There  were  a  lot  of  people, 
including  ones  at  Livermore,  who  got  very  excited  about  how  the 
crater  lips  were  formed,  and  that  sort  of  thing.  Cratering  was  a  big 
thrust.  Vortman  was  digging  canals,  out  on  the  Yucca  dry  lake.  I 
stayed  as  far  away  from  that  program  as  I  could;  I  wasn't  too 
interested  in  that. 

The  moratorium  on  testing  ended  in  September  of  1 961 .  Fol¬ 
lowing  the  atmospheric  detonation  of  a  Soviet  device  with  a  yield  of 
over  50  megatons  as  the  first  of  a  series  of  Soviet  atmospheric  tests, 
President  Kennedy  ordered  the  resumption  of  testing  at  the  Test 
Site.  There  was  the  proviso  that  the  tests  should  be  carried  out 
underground,  unless  a  specific  exception  was  approved.  The  first 
event  at  the  NTS  following  the  moratorium  was  the  Livermore  2.6 
kiloton  Antler  test,  fired  on  September  15,  1961  in  a  tunnel.  It  was 
followed  by  Shrew,  a  Los  Alamos  safety  test  in  a  drill  hole,  fired  on 
September  16,  1961.  Both  events  released  measurable  amounts  of 
activity;  the  activity  released  from  Antler  was  detected  off  site,  that 
from  Shrew  was  not. 


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69 


During  the  next  few  months  the  experience  of  both  Laborato¬ 
ries  showed  that  the  containment  of  the  radioactive  materials  pro¬ 
duced  by  an  underground  detonation  was  not  a  trivial  task,  whether 
the  device  was  emplaced  in  a  tunnel,  or  in  a  drill  hole.  The  first 
eleven  events  all  released  activity.  During  the  first  year  there  were 
43  shots  fired  in  emplacement  holes  by  Los  Alamos  and  Livermore. 
One,  Eel,  released  some  1,900,000  curies,  and  the  activity  was 
detected  off  site.  Twenty-one  released  material  that  was  detected 
only  on  site.  Twenty-one  are  not  recorded  as  having  released 
activity. 

Carothers:  When  the  moratorium  ended  Los  Alamos  used  drill 
holes  for  their  shots,  and  Livermore  did  their  shots  in  the  tunnels. 
Was  there  any  kind  of  agreement,  or  understanding  that  Los  Alamos 
would  do  shots  in  drill  holes,  and  Livermore  would  do  tunnel  shots, 
so  there  would  be  experience  with  both  ways  of  doing  the  experi¬ 
ments? 

Brownlee:  I  don't  know  that  there  was  anything  like  that. 
Probably  there  was  no  reason  for  it  at  all.  But,  at  the  time  I  thought 
there  was  a  reason.  Our  perception  at  Los  Alamos,  and  mine,  which 
came  a  lot  from  Al  Graves,  and  some  of  AI's  obviously  came  from 
Norris,  was  that  Los  Alamos  had  concluded  it  didn't  make  any 
difference  what  the  facts  were,  peaceful  uses  of  nuclear  energy 
would  never  come  to  anything.  If  Livermore  wanted  to  waste  their 
time  with  Peaceful  Nuclear  Explosives  -  -  PNE  things  -  -  that  was 
Livermore's  prerogative.  But  we  at  Los  Alamos  would,  as  a  matter 
of  policy,  not  devote  any  of  our  thinking  to  PNE  type  things,  and 
tunnels  smelled  of  PNE. 

Our  interest  was  bombs,  and  testing  bombs,  and  for  that 
vertical  holes  were  quite  sufficient.  If  you  were  going  to  make 
harbors  and  things  like  that  you  had  to  have  answers  to  certain  kinds 
of  questions  which  tunnels  helped  you  answer.  But  everybody  knew 
-  -  Los  Alamos  thinking  -  -  that  the  best  place  to  test  bombs  was  right 
where  we  were;  Area  3.  So,  don't  go  near  those  mountains  where 
who  knows  what  evils  lurk.  We'll  stay  right  here,  thank  you.  So, 
the  impression  I  had  was  that  PNE  was  what  separated  them.  Now, 
in  fact,  1  do  not  know  what  Livermore  was  thinking,  and  I  do  not 
know  whether  PNE  figured  in  Livermore's  thinking  or  not.  I  don't 
know.  But  1  think  that's  kind  of  how  we  saw  it,  early  on  anyway. 


70 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


I  would  like  to  remember,  but  it's  probably  totally  incorrect, 
that  I  was  a  bit  more  objective  than  some  of  the  other  people  at  Los 
Alamos.  I  was  never  quite  so  quick  to  pick  up  the  party  line.  I  always 
got  along  well  with  Livermore  people.  But  there  was  a  party  line; 
thou  shall  not  go  near  Livermore  people,  because  they're  all  terribly 
bad.  When  I  got  permission  to  go  to  visit  Rainier  I  was  the  only  Los 
Alamos  person  who  went  and  mixed  with  the  Livermore  people.  I 
didn't  mind  that,  but  there  were  other  people  who  didn't  approve 
of  that. 

Carothers:  I'll  tell  you  a  story  I  heard  about  why  Los  Alamos 
never  had  tunnels.  I  can't  vouch  for  its  truth,  but  it  goes  like  this. 
Once  upon  a  time  Norris  Bradbury  visited  the  Test  Site,  during  the 
moratorium.  Livermore  was  busily  digging  tunnels,  having  nothing 
else  to  do.  As  part  of  Norris'  tour  of  the  Site,  Livermore  people 
took  him  to  the  tunnels.  They  got  into  one  of  the  little  mining  cars 
and  rattled  back  into  the  tunnel,  which  was  poorly  lighted,  wet, 
noisy,  dirty,  and  all  the  sorts  of  things  tunnels  sometimes  are  when 
mining  is  going  on.  When  they  came  back  out  Norris  said,  "My 
people  will  never  work  under  those  conditions."  And  that  was  that 
for  tunnels. 

Brownlee:  That's  entirely  consistent  with  Norris.  I  can  believe 
that.  That's  the  way  Norris  was.  But  it's  also  consistent  with  what 
I  told  you;  tunnels  were  unneccesary,  unneeded,  and  we  would  do 
our  work  in  vertical  holes. 

But  I  was  always  very  curious  about  the  tunnels  shots.  I  had 
seen  those  sandbags  in  Rainier  that  had  turned  into  rock,  and  the 
other  things  that  had  happened  in  the  tunnel,  and  I  thought  that  was 
very  interesting  stuff.  I  went  up  and  visited  whenever  I  could,  which 
wasn't  all  that  often.  Campbell,  for  example,  didn't  approve  of 
Livermore,  or  tunnels.  If  you  were  going  to  drive  up  there  you 
better  not  let  Campbell  discover  that  you  drove  one  of  his  AEC  cars 
up  there.  You  had  no  business  being  up  there.  You  were  supposed 
to  stay  in  Area  3.  So,  whenever  I  went  there  I  was  either  on  the  q.t., 
or  I  had  some  special  dispensation.  I  don't  know  that  there  was  any 
reason  for  that.  That's  just  the  way  it  was. 

Well,  the  Russians  terminated  the  moratorium.  Incidentally,  I 
believe  that  was  done  perfectly  legally.  You  hear  that  the  Russians 
violated  the  agreement.  I  believe  the  understanding  was,  "We  will 


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71 


tell  you  before  we  shoot  again."  And  they  did.  They  told  us  the 
day  before.  I  think  they  did  what  was  perfectly  legal  in  the  eyes  of 
the  State  Department.  We  had  the  same  option. 

They  certainly  didn't  try  to  conceal  it.  But  Kennedy  was  irate, 
and  he  called  here  and  said,  "How  soon  can  you  get  a  bomb  off?" 
We  must  have  gotten  that  call  the  first  week  in  September,  and  I 
believe  our  answer  was,  "We  can  do  an  underground  shot  in  one  of 
our  vertical  holes  in  a  week."  The  problem  was,  that  was  in  no  way 
a  quid  pro  quo.  To  do  a  few  kilotons  in  an  underground  shot  in 
Nevada  was  certainly  not  equivalent  to  fifty  megatons  or  so.  But, 
that's  what  we  were  ready  to  do,  that's  what  we  said  we  could  do, 
and  Shrew,  our  first  shot,  was  not  very  long  after  that. 

The  point  is,  we  were  ready  to  do  that  very  quickly  because  we 
did  indeed  have  vertical  holes  ready.  And,  we  knew,  or  guessed, 
how  big  a  yield  we  could  fire  in  them. 

So,  through  '61  and  '62  we  did  some  shots,  and  we  were 
gathering  information.  Before  we  had  the  underground  treaty  in 
'63  we  had  satisfied  ourselves  that  we  could  get  the  necessary  data 
we  wanted  by  testing  underground.  We  had  gotten  enough  infor¬ 
mation  to  know  how  to  do  that.  And  that  was  due  to  A1  Graves,  and 
Campbell,  and  Newman,  in  my  view.  I  would  name  those  three 
people  as  having  done  the  necessary  thinking  and  preliminary  work 
to  allow  us  to  go  that  way  fairly  easily,  and  in  a  straightforward 
manner. 

One  of  the  projects  that  was  significant  for  containment  was 
the  attempt  by  people  at  Livermore  to  develop  a  way  to  collect  so- 
called  prompt  rad  chem  samples.  The  concept  was  that  there  would 
be  an  open  pipe  running  from  the  device  to  some  collecting  station 
on  the  surface  outside  the  tunnel,  or  by  the  top  of  the  emplacement 
hole.  There  a  sample  of  the  device  debris  would  be  collected, 
essentially  at  the  time  of  the  detonation,  and  returned  to  the  Labo¬ 
ratory  for  analysis.  The  work  following  the  moratorium  was  basi¬ 
cally  a  continuation  of  the  work  Gary  Higgins  had  started  during 
Hardtack  II. 

There  is  little  question  that  this  effort  led  to  at  least  two  major 
ventings.  Dick  Heckman,  a  chemical  engineer,  was  in  charge  of  the 
field  effort  to  design  the  pipes  and  other  hardware  that  were  to 
collect  these  samples. 


72 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Heckman:  After  the  moratorium  I  went  back  to  the  under¬ 
ground  sampling  business.  There  was  what  I  called  the  fast 
sampling,  which  was  an  attempt  to  get  fast,  or  prompt  samples, 
where  what  I  was  trying  to  do  was  to  get  refractory  bomb  debris.  In 
other  words,  the  kind  of  bomb  debris  you  would  normally  get  from 
post-shot  drilling,  where  the  activity  is  trapped  in  the  melted  rock, 
which  is  the  standard  sort  of  thing.  What  I  was  initially  trying  to  do 
was  develop  a  competitive  process  to  that. 

Carothers:  You  did  your  first  tries  on  the  shots  that  Livermore 
did  in  the  tunnels,  like  Antler?  You  were  the  guy  who  was  ruining 
the  containment  on  those? 

Heckman:  Yes.  Well,  I  didn't  have  anything  to  do  with 
Antler's  failure,  because  we  didn't  have  time  to  get  the  sampling 
system  set  up.  I  think  that  you  have  to  give  Mike  Heusinkveld  a  lot 
of  the  credit  for  the  ideas.  In  other  words,  I'm  only  guilty  as  being 
the  field  guy  who  carried  out  the  concepts  that  Mike  had. 

On  Gnome  there  was  such  an  experiment,  a  fast  sampling 
experiment.  We  had  a  vacuum  system  with  a  pipe  ten  inches  in 
diameter  down  to  the  shot  room.  It  was  a  beautiful  straight,  vertical 
hole.  You  could  go  down  into  the  shot  room  at  Gnome,  look  up 
through  that  pipe,  and  at  noon  you  could  see  stars.  It  really  does 
work.  You  could  see  stars. 

Carothers:  You  know,  I've  heard  that  story,  and  I  have  done 
a  little  simple-minded  calculation  about  the  solid  angle  and  what 
fraction  of  the  sky  you  see,  and  how  many  visible  stars  there  are,  and 
the  probability  of  there  being  a  star  in  that  patch  of  sky  is  so  small 
that  I  don't  believe  you. 

Heckman:  Fine.  I  understand  all  your  arguments,  and  all  the 
rest  of  it,  but  I  was  there,  and  my  recollection  is  I  saw  stars.  I'm 
convinced  I  saw  stars.  Anyway,  the  point  is  that  is  was  very  straight. 

Carothers:  It  was  straight,  I  know  that.  You  could  look  from 
top  to  bottom.  Did  you  ever  look  down  and  see  the  stars  down  at 
the  bottom? 

Heckman:  I  have  acrophobia.  1  don't  like  to  look  down  much. 

So  we  had  the  sampling  pipe,  and  fortunately,  it  didn't  work. 
We  had  enough  problems  on  Gnome  as  it  was,  but  if  that  sampling 
pipe  had  really  worked,  we  could  have  had  another  Des  Moines. 


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73 


Higgins:  On  Gnome  there  was  a  ten-inch  diameter  hole 
pointed  directly  at  the  device.  It  went  to  the  surface,  and  it  was 
open  all  the  way.  It  not  only  sealed  up,  but  we  probed  the  inside 
of  it  with  a  radiation  detector  down  to  within  two  cavity  radii,  and 
were  unable  to  detect  the  fact  that  there  had  been  a  nuclear 
explosion  there.  There  was  no  activity,  not  even  gaseous  activity. 
To  me  that  was,  and  is  still,  rather  surprising,  because  there  was 
plenty  of  tritium  tracer  around  the  Gnome  explosion,  and  it  was 
everywhere  else,  but  not  in  the  rad  chem  sampling  hole,  believe  it 
or  not.  It  certainly  went  into  the  tunnel. 

Carothers:  Well,  there  were  people,  Gary,  and  I'm  sure  you're 
familiar  with  this,  who  believed  that  the  way  to  ensure  sealing  and 
containment  on  cables  and  small  diameter  holes  was  to  always,  on 
all  drawings,  and  when  discussing  them,  speak  of  them  as  rad  chem 
sampling  devices.  Then,  the  evidence  was,  nothing  would  ever 
come  up  them.  You'd  never  see  an  atom. 

Higgins:  Not  even  one.  You're  right,  I'm  familiar  with  that 
approach. 

Heckman:  The  concept  behind  all  of  this  sampling  work  was 
that  the  bomb  was  going  to  go  off,  some  of  the  debris  would  fly  into 
the  pipe,  the  ground  shock  would  then  squeeze  off  the  end  of  the 
pipe,  and  now  I  would  have  a  pressure  pulse,  and  it  would  be  just 
like  a  shock  tube. 

These  were  vacuum  pipes  that  looked  directly  at  the  device, 
and  so  you  put  a  slug  of  gas  in,  and  it's  equivalent  to  puncturing  an 
aluminum  diaphragm  and  allowing  a  pressure  wave  to  travel  down 
the  pipe.  You  can  very  easily  show  that  if  indeed  it  behaves  like  that, 
with  the  pipe  shut  off  by  the  ground  shock,  there's  a  certain 
maximum  pressure  wave  that  will  arrive  at  the  other  end.  So  you 
design  a  system  that  will  withstand  that  kind  of  pressure. 

The  chemical  engineers  devised  several  ingenious  schemes  to 
keep  the  pipe  open,  and  Dick  Heckman  describes  what  was  done  on 
Eel,  in  May,  1962,  and  on  Des  Moines,  in  June,  1962.  Both  were 
major  ventings.  The  reported  release  on  Eel  was  1 .9  megacuries;  on 
Des  Moines,  1 1  megacuries. 


74  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Heckman:  My  good  friend  Heusinkveld  wanted  to  use  slifers 
as  a  way  of  getting  a  quick  yield  measurement,  and  he  came  up  with 
this  great  idea  where  he  just  drilled  a  satellite  hole,  filled  it  with 
drilling  mud,  and  stuck  his  slifer  cable  in  it. 

Carothers:  And  the  mud  was  going  to  keep  it  open? 

Heckman:  Well,  he  didn't  think  about  what  the  mud  was  going 
to  do.  He  just  knew  the  mud  was  going  to  transmit  the  shock  wave 
as  it  went  out.  On  that  same  shot,  which  was  Eel,  1  had  decided  that 
maybe  I  could  get  an  explosive  that  would  get  detonated  by  the 
shock  wave.  I  wanted  something  that  would  burn  pretty  slowly,  and 
nitromethane  logically  comes  to  the  fore.  And  so  we  indeed  did 
that. 

Well,  Mike's  slifer  cable  worked  fine,  but  immediately  there 
was  this  1  50  or  200  foot  high  column  of  mud  that  spewed  out  of 
his  slifer  hole.  Our  sampling  system  worked  and  we  got  samples  out 
of  it,  but  it  didn't  close  off  either,  so  Eel  would  have  vented  even 
if  Mike's  slifer  hole  hadn't  been  there. 

We  were  not  looking  at  the  device  itself.  These  were  now 
satellite  holes.  People  said  that  the  device  goes  off,  and  the  cavity 
grows  out  in  this  length  of  time,  and  our  thought  was  that  if  we  could 
connect  up  with  that  initial  vaporized  zone,  we'd  stay  connected. 
Then  we  could  build  very  sturdy  systems  that  would  take  the 
thousand  psi  or  so  of  pressure,  with  cyclone  separators  we  could 
bury  underground,  and  then  we  could  pull  samples  out  of  them. 

So,  we  tried  a  straight  nitromethane  tube,  but  what  we  found 
there  was  that  when  you  look  at  the  burn  velocity  of  the  nitrometh¬ 
ane,  it  burned  faster  than  the  ground  shock  coming  through  the 
alluvium.  We  probably  were  exploding  the  pipe;  we  were  putting 
pressure  inside  at  the  wrong  time.  So  then  we  had  them  wind  us  up 
a  helical  pipe,  where  the  spacing  on  the  pitch  changed  as  you  went 
up,  and  we  tried  that.  This  was  also  nitromethane  filled. 

We  seemed  to  get  a  pretty  good  sample  out  of  it,  but  the 
problem  we  had  was  that  when  the  nitromethane  went  off,  razor 
blade  size  pieces  of  steel  just  spalled  off,  and  that  ended  up  clogging 
up  our  system.  So  that  clearly  wouldn't  work.  Well,  we  got  to 
thinking  about  it,  because  Mike  had  had  a  spectacularly  successful 
connection  to  the  cavity  on  Eel. 


74 


f 


Eel  venting  through  pipes  intersecting  the  cavity.  May  19,  1962. 


Eel  event  -  the  black  cloud  behind  the  white  plume  is  the  mud  and  cables  ejected  from  the  hydrodynamic 

yield  hole. 


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So  we  started  looking  into  it,  and  we  ended  up  going  back  to 
the  basic  viscosity  rules  and  discovered  dilatant  fluids.  That's 
something  in  which  the  apparent  viscosity  is  proportional  to  the  rate 
of  shear.  To  put  it  in  simple  terms,  if  1  could  fill  a  pipe  with  a  fluid 
so  while  the  shock  wave  was  going  through  it  the  fluid  had  the 
viscosity  of  solid  concrete,  it  would  keep  the  pipe  from  crushing, 
and  then  as  the  shock  wave  went  past,  the  stuff  would  act  like  a  fluid. 

In  looking  around  we  realized  that  ordinary  starch  and  water 
would  do  this.  And  we  added  a  gel  to  it.  So,  we  did  some  tests  and 
it  all  looked  good  in  the  laboratory.  I  remember  one  spectacular 
experiment  I  did.  We  had  a  beaker  sitting  on  the  table,  and  I  said, 
"Okay,  if  this  is  really  working,  what  I  am  supposed  to  be  able  to 
do  is  stick  a  spatula  in  it,  and  if  I  lift  it  rapidly,  it  will  set  up  and  I'll 
be  able  to  lift  the  whole  beaker  up. 

Carothers:  Be  sure  you  don't  stop  lifting. 

Heckman:  Well,  that  was  the  problem.  You  can  only  lift  to  as 
long  as  your  arm  is,  and  that  could  be  right  over  your  head. 
However,  that  demonstration,  as  far  as  I  was  concerned,  was  a  very 
practical  one. 

Carothers:  I  recall  you  and  Heusinkveld  had  a  sampling  pipe 
on  Des  Moines.  What  clever  scheme  did  you  use  there  to  breach  the 
stemming? 

Heckman:  On  Des  Moines  we  built  a  section  of  two-foot 
diameter  pipe,  and  what  we  did  is  we  packed  it  with  polyethylene 
tubes,  polyethylene  pipe,  and  ran  it  through  the  stemming.  Mike 
put  a  slifer  cable  right  next  to  our  inlet  section,  and  he  put  a  slifer 
cable  over  along  the  tunnel  wall,  and  then,  of  course,  that  part  of 
the  tunnel  was  all  packed  with  sandbags.  Well,  as  you  remember, 
Des  Moines  was  one  of  the  more  spectacular  containment  failures. 

Carothers:  When  you  designed  this  horizontal  pipe  for  your 
inlet  experiment,  and  stuffed  it  with  the  polyethylene  tubes  which 
would  vaporize  and  explode  and  keep  the  pipe  open,  what  was  going 
to  close  it?  If  you  had  deliberately  prevented  the  ground  shock  from 
closing  it,  what  was  going  to  close  it? 

Heckman:  Well,  Mike  didn't  really  think  that  one  completely 
through,  and  it  never  occurred  to  me  to  worry  about  it,  because  we 
had  that  big  gas-tight  door,  right?  You  were  going  to  get  a  little 


76  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

activity  out,  sure.  Remember,  this  was  ail  kind  of  back-of-the- 
enveiope,  and  so  you  didn't  really  think  about  what  kind  of  pulse 
that  was  going  to  be  put  out. 

Well,  when  we  looked  at  the  signals  from  the  siifers,  the  slifer 
he  put  by  the  tunnel  we  never  did  get  a  signal  out  of.  The  one  on 
the  pipe  just  took  off,  and  clearly  was  moving  at  about  two  to  three 
times  the  free  field  velocity.  When  you  tried  to  look  at  the  signal 
that  was  coming  off  of  the  slifer  on  the  side  of  the  tunnel,  comparing 
that  with  the  free  field  siifers  that  they  had  installed  in  other 
locations,  it  was  just  very  clear  that  the  shock  wave  coming  out  of 
our  pipe  was  just  blowing  it  up. 

It  became  also  very  obvious  at  this  point  that  you  don't  get  just 
a  little  bit  of  the  dragon's  breath.  Once  you  connect  with  the 
dragon,  he  keeps  blowing.  So,  as  you  remember,  the  blast  door  that 
was  sealing  the  tunnel  came  flying  out. 

Carothers:  Richard,  everything  came  flying  out. 

Heckman:  Yes.  And  it's  just  very  clear  that  Mike  Heusinkveld 
and  I  were  responsible  for  the  Des  Moines  fiasco. 

Carothers:  Well,  you  can't  really  claim  all  the  credit.  There 
was  a  vertical  rad  chem  sampling  hole  that  looked  from  the  top  of 
the  mesa  down  to  the  device,  and  pictures  from  the  fast  cameras 
show  that  vented  immediately,  in  less  than  a  millisecond.  I  do 
believe  that  your  attempt  to  keep  the  pipe  in  the  tunnel  open 
succeeded,  and  led  to  the  venting  out  the  portal.  But  even  if  that 
hadn't  happened,  Des  Moines  would  have  had  a  big  release  due  to 
that  vertical  sampling  pipe.  So,  maybe  we  should  give  Des  Moines 
to  the  chemists  in  general,  rather  than  to  you  in  particular. 

The  following  pictures  of  the  Des  Moines  venting,  on  June  13, 
1962,  were  taken  by  the  author  with  a  hand-held  camera.  The 
pictures  were  taken  at  irregular  time  intervals;  the  elapsed  time 
between  the  first  and  last  is  probably  about  ten  minutes.  The  total 
release  is  recorded  as  1 1,000,000  curies,  which  is  one  of  the  largest 
releases  from  any  underground  event.  Regardless  of  what  definition 
is  chosen,  Des  Moines  was  not  successfully  contained.  It  is  instruc¬ 
tive  to  observe  the  amount  of  material  ejected  from  the  tunnel  by  the 
energy  release  from  what  was  a  rather  low  yield  device. 


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77 


In  the  pictures  there  are  three  distinct  venting  paths  that  can  be 
seen,  The  first  is  from  the  rad  chem  sampling  hole  that  led  to  the 
mesa  top.  As  was  mentioned  above,  material  was  released  there 
within  the  first  millisecond.  The  second  release  occured  through  a 
hole  that  ran  from  the  the  face  of  the  mesa  down  to  the  tunnel,  and 
can  be  seen  as  a  plume  that  appears  before  the  venting  from  the 
portal  develops.  The  purpose  of  this  hole  was  basically  to  protect 
the  diagnostic  film  in  the  trailers  near  the  portal.  The  thought  was 
that  if  there  was  venting  into  the  tunnel,  the  pressure  would  be 
relieved  by  having  an  open  hole  from  the  tunnel  to  the  mesa  face. 
Hopefully,  such  pressure  relief  would  allow  the  door  near  the  portal 
to  remain  intact,  and  so  prevent  radioactive  material  from  blacken¬ 
ing  the  diagnostic  films  in  the  trailers  near  the  portal.  The  third,  and 
major  release,  was  from  the  portal  after  the  gas-seal  door  had  been 
forceably  ejected. 


Des  Moines;  Fired  in  Tunnel  U12j  on  June  13,  1962.  The  plume  from  the  initial  venting 
through  the  vertical  radiochemistry  sampling  hole,  which  occurred  within  millisconds, 
can  be  seen  at  the  top  of  the  mesa. 


78 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


The  second  release  path  was  through  the  pressure  relief  hole,  and  occurred  within 
seconds.  Material  is  beginning  to  vent  from  the  portal,  lower  left. 


As  the  venting  was  established  out  the  portal,  the  first  two  vent  paths  became  less 
important. 


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79 


There  was  essentially  no  cloud  rise.  The  sandbag  stemming  and  the  material  scoured 
from  the  tunnel  itself  stayed  close  to  the  ground. 


80 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


There  were  between  one  and  two  hundred  people  in  the  area  at  shot  time.  At  about  ten 
minutes  it  seemed  prudent  to  leave  the  scene. 

However,  neither  the  Des  Moines  venting,  nor  that  of  Platte 
(about  2  megacuries)  in  April  of  1962,  nor  that  of  Eel  (about  2 
megacuries)  in  May  of  1962,  caused  significant  problems  to  the 
overall  test  program.  They  were  significant  problems  to  the  people 
at  Livermore,  particularly  the  people  trying  to  collect  data  on  film, 
but  there  was  no  stoppage  of  testing  while  the  causes  of  the  ventings 
were  explored,  there  were  no  changes  in  field  procedures,  and  so  on. 
Des  Moines  was  detonated  on  June  13,  1962,  and  the  Dominic 
operation  was  actively  being  carried  out  in  the  Christmas  Island 
area.  In  the  week  preceding  and  the  week  following  Des  Moines, 
there  were  a  total  of  seven  airdrops  of  devices  of  intermediate  or  low 
megaton  yield.  If  10  megacuries  is  taken  as  the  H+12  hour  activity 
from  1  kiloton  of  fission,  the  Des  Moines  release  was  about  that  of 
a  1  kiloton  atmospheric  shot.  That  was  trivial  compared  to  the 
activity  being  released  in  the  Pacific,  and  perhaps  that  influenced 
the  AEC.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  close  to  home,  and  the  people 
whose  data  were  lost  were  not  happy. 


The  Moritorium  and  the  Return  to  Testing  8 1 

In  all,  Livermore  fired  seven  tunnel  events  afterthe  resumption 
of  testing  in  1961,  and  only  one,  the  Madison  event  was  contained. 
The  last  Livermore  tunnel  event  was  Yuba,  fired  on  June  15,  1963. 
It  was  not  contained  and  released  material  that  was  detected  off  the 
Test  Site. 

It  was  in  1963  that  the  Nuclear  Test  Ban  Treaty,  widely  known 
as  the  Limited  Test  Ban  Treaty,  or  the  Partial  Test  Ban  Treaty  was 
signed.  As  observed  in  the  first  chapter,  the  Treaty  did  not  say  any 
event  had  to  be  designed  to  contain  all  the  radioactive  products  that 
were  produced  -  -  only  that  the  radioactive  debris  should  not  cross 
the  border  of,  in  this  case,  the  United  States.  For  example,  nuclear 
cratering  experiments  continued  until  December  8,  1968,  when  the 
30  kt  cratering  event  Schooner  was  fired,  presumably  under  meteo¬ 
rological  conditions  that  would  retain  the  vented  activity  with  the 
boundaries  of  the  United  States  for  some  indeterminate  time. 

Containment  failures,  as  defined  today,  occurred  both  before 
and  after  the  Treaty  was  signed.  Most  of  them  were  minor  seepages, 
but  some  were  major  failures,  particularly  for  the  experimenters 
trying  to  collect  information  from  the  detonation.  There  were  a 
variety  of  reasons  for  the  ventings,  and  it  was  not  always  easy  to 
determine  the  cause  of  those  failures. 

Brownlee:  There  was  Bandicoot,  in  1962,  in  about  the  first 
year.  There  was  nothing  wrong  with  the  containment  design, 
nothing  wrong  with  the  emplacement,  or  anything  like  that.  I  think 
that  was  all  done  right.  We  had  everything  placed  assumingthe  yield 
we  were  told  it  would  go  would  in  fact  be  the  yield.  The  hole  was 
deep  enough  for  that  yield,  but  1  believe  there's  no  doubt  it  went 
well  above  that.  We  had  enough  hydrodynamic  data  that  we  were 
convinced  of  that.  And  so,  the  hole  was  just  too  shallow,  and  it 
vented.  It  was  just  that  there  was  this  enormously  surprising  yield. 
Now,  why  was  the  Bandicoot  yield  so  surprising?  Well,  it  was  a  type 
of  device  where  nobody  can  estimate  yield  very  well.  Of  course, 
what  we  should  have  done  was  put  it  much  deeper,  just  to  be 
conservative.  But,  you  see,  we  took  the  designers  word  for  it;  what 
the  yield  would  be,  and  what  the  max  cred  was. 

That  as  one  of  the  few  times  when  the  yield  was,  in  effect, 
dictated  b>  a  committee,  which  paid  little  attention  to  data  that 
didn't  fit  the  desired  results.  It  was  designed  to  be  so  many  kilotons, 
so  that  is  what  it  was.  And  it  wasn't.  It  just  wasn't. 


82  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Carothers:  I  have  noticed,  at  the  CEP  meetings,  that  you  are 
often  skeptical  of  numbers  we  get  from  the  designers. 

Brownlee:  You've  noticed  that? 

Carothers:  I  have  noticed  that.  Perhaps  that's  because  of  your 
experiences  with  Bandicoot  and  Pike. 

Brownlee:  It's  more  than  that.  We've  had  a  number  of  times 
where  I  have  seen  idiocies  promulgated  as  fact.  And  it's  done  for 
political  reasons.  You  understand  how  that  goes;  we  have  promised 
the  Navy,  or  the  Army  that  this  thing  is  going  to  be  so  many 
kilotons.  And,  that's  what  they  are  going  to  get.  Never  mind  what 
the  yield  really  looks  like. 

Carothers:  Well,  Bob,  you  must  realize  that  having  promised 
a  particular  yield,  over  the  course  of  this  many  year  development 
through  the  Phase  3  and  into  the  stockpile,  there  has  been  lots  and 
lots  of  money  and  time  spent  on  targeting  plans,  training  manuals, 
and  so  forth,  all  based  on  that  yield.  Now,  you're  not  going  to  come 
in  at  some  late  date  and  tell  them  the  yield  isn't  what  you  promised 
them,  are  you? 

Brownlee:  Yes,  if  it  is  different.  I  do  understand  the  cycle 
you've  described,  but  I  do  believe  that  the  quicker  the  country  finds 
out  that  something  is  different  from  what  they  thought  it  was,  the 
better  off  the  country  is. 

I  was  bitter  about  Bandicoot.  I  had  done  what  I  had  been  told 
to  do,  which  was  to  contain  this  shot  where  the  yield  was  going  to 
be  thus  and  so,  and  that's  it.  After  the  fact  they  insisted  that's  what 
it  was,  and  it  was  just  a  lie.  I  had  my  own  hydrodynamic  yield 
measurements,  and  those  measurements  gave  a  much  different 
number,  and  I  have  no  reason  to  take  them  back  today;  they  were 
good  measurements.  Now,  we  have  relooked  at  Bandicoot.  We 
went  back  and  drilled  for  more  samples.  This  was  during  Eric  Jones' 
stay.  Eric  reviewed  all  my  data,  and  when  he  got  all  through  he  said, 
"The  hydrodynamic  data  are  correct."  By  this  time  we  had  gotten 
rid  of  the  guy  who  was  the  problem,  and  so  we  got  them  to  concede 
that  the  yield  really  was  a  lot  higher  than  it  was  originally  reported. 

In  early  1963  an  informal  meeting  was  held  between  Los 
Alamos  and  Livermore  test  principals  to  evaluate  individual  tests. 
The  intention  was  to  share  procedures,  plans,  and  lessons  learned, 


The  Moritorium  and  the  Return  to  Testing  83 

but  containment  was  not  a  major  part  of  the  discussions.  After  the 
Limited  Test  Ban  Treaty  was  ratified  in  October  in  October,  1963, 
the  Eagle  event  vented.  Considered  as  a  probable  violation  of  the 
treaty,  the  event  triggered  additional  discussions  on  containment  at 
various  levels  in  the  Laboratories,  and  in  the  AEC.  From  these,  the 
Test  Evaluation  Panel  was  formally  established  in  December. 

The  Panel  consisted  of  consultants,  and  persons  furnished  by 
LASL,  LRL,  Sandia,  DOD,  the  Public  Health  Service,  and  the  AEC. 
The  USGS  furnished  the  geologic  information.  The  purpose  of  the 
Panel  was  to  “review  all  data  pertinent  to  the  containment  aspects 
of  each  planned  nuclear  test;  then,  based  on  these  data,  to  assign  the 
test  to  one  of  the  risk  categories  defined  below.” 

The  TEP  had  three  categories,  much  as  the  CEP  does,  but  there 
the  similarity  ends.  The  TEP  Category  A,  in  1966,  was  “Under¬ 
ground  nuclear  tests  which,  on  the  basis  of  experience,  should  not 
release  a  significant  amount  of  radioactive  material.  It  must  be 
understood  that,  even  in  this  category,  unforeseen  conditions  may 
develop  which  result  in  the  release  of  detectable  levels  of  radioac¬ 
tivity  at  the  border.”  The  NVO  Planning  Directive  for  1964  said, 
“The  emplacement  and  firing  of  devices  will  be  designed  to  result 
in  containment  in  all  cases  where  this  requirement  is  not  inconsis¬ 
tent  with  the  technical  objectives.” 

Cliff  Olsen,  long  time  Livermore  containment  scientist,  made 
these  comments  about  the  TEP: 

Olsen:  The  people  who  tended  to  be  at  the  TEP  meetings  were 
the  Test  Group  Directors,  and  they  presented  the  shots.  The 
presentations  were  very  rudimentary.  There  was  a  data  sheet,  and 
maybe  a  line-of-sight  pipe  layout,  or  a  stemming  drawing.  Often 
there  was  no  stemming  drawing,  because  we  had  generic  stemming 
plans.  There  was  LASL  5,  or  LASL  2  at  that  time.  We  would  have 
our  stemming  plan,  which  was  pea  gravel  with  fifty  feet  of  sand 
halfway  up,  and  fifty  feet  of  sand  at  the  surface,  and  that  was  our 
stemming  plan.  So,  there  was  no  need  for  a  drawing,  because  they 
were  all  the  same.  The  TEP  got  into  reviewing  the  designs  of 
particular  features  a  lot  more  than  the  CEP  does.  In  a  sense,  they 
would  suggest  changes,  and  they  would  actually  review  mechanical 
designs  -  -  why  don't  you  do  this,  why  don't  you  do  that.  And  design 
changes  to  the  hardware  were  made  as  a  result  of  the  TEP. 


84 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


One  of  the  things  with  the  TEP,  which  I  guess  was  sort  of 
indicative  of  the  climate  at  the  time,  was  there  were  three  catego¬ 
ries,  A,  B,  C,  and  C  was,  "Underground  nuclear  tests  which  are 
expected  to  release  a  significant  amount  of  radioactive  material." 
There  was  no  particular  onus  to  getting  a  C.  It  simply  meant  that 
you  made  different  notifications  before  you  shot  it.  It  had  nothing 
to  do  with  whether  you  were  going  to  execute  the  event.  It  wasn't 
that  somebody  in  Washington  or  Germantown  was  going  to  have  a 
hemorrhage  when  he  saw  it.  It  was  just  the  design  of  the  event. 

One  venting  in  particular,  from  the  Pike  event,  fired  March  13, 
1964,  has  had  a  major  and  continuing  impact  on  the  Test  Program. 
The  fallout  projections  for  following  events  have  been  based  on  the 
“Pike  Model,”  which  means  that  the  possible  fallout  from  the 
proposed  shot  is  scaled  to  the  readings  that  were  obtained  in  the  Pike 
fallout  pattern  according  to  the  yield  ratio  of  the  two  events.  The 
basic  assumption  is  that  the  proposed  shot  will  release  the  same 
fraction  of  the  activity  that  Pike  did. 

Brownlee:  Pike  has  cost  all  of  us  enormous  amounts  of  time, 
and  effort,  and  money,  and  I  think  needlessly.  That  is  a  thing  I  have 
never  been  able  to  communicate  to  N  VO  in  modern  times.  You  see, 
one  of  the  things  everybody  forgets  is  that  we  had  a  line-of-sight 
pipe  on  Pike.  It  didn't  come  to  the  surface,  so  people  forget  that 
it  was  there.  And,  since  it  didn't  come  to  the  surface,  although  it 
went  a  substantial  distance,  it  had  no  closures  or  anything.  That 
pipe  was  one  of  the  key  factors.  Another  was  that  Pike  was  expected 
to  have  a  maximum  credible  yield  of  a  certain  value  -  -  not  very 
large,  but  definitely  not  a  safety  shot.  Well,  it  went  over  one  and 
half  times  the  max  cred.  And  then,  it  was  in  a  very  shallow  hole; 
400  feet  or  so. 

What  I  knew  about  it  was  that  it  had  this  predicted  max  cred, 
and  the  pipe  was  so  long  and  so  big.  I  said,  "A  lot  of  energy  is  going 
to  come  to  the  top  of  that  pipe."  I  did  not  realize  that  there  was 
any  chance  that  the  yield  could  go  higher  than  what  I  was  told,  or 
I  would  have  hollered.  I  knew  that  it  was  in  a  shallow  hole,  so  that 
bothered  me  as  it  was.  Another  thing  I  did  not  know  was  that  when 
they  drilled  that  hole  they  had  run  into  what  I  called  hourglass  sand. 
And  guess  where  that  layer  of  sand  was  -  -  which  I  found  out  after 
the  shot.  It  was  right  at  the  top  of  that  pipe. 


The  Moritorium  and  the  Return  to  Testing 


85 


Now,  there's  no  chance  in  the  world  we  will  ever  duplicate 
Pike.  First  of  ail,  we  won't  shoot  anything  at  400  feet.  Secondly, 
we  won't  have  a  pipe  on  it  like  that.  Thirdly,  in  a  medium  where 
the  sand  was  running  like  water  -  -  we'II  never  do  that.  And  finally, 
having  a  max  cred  yield  as  bad  as  that  is  kind  of  unthinkable.  I  say, 
"Kind  of  unthinkable."  When  you  combine  all  those  things,  Pike 
was  a  lead-pipe  cinch  to  be  spectacular. 

My  argument  is  that  to  treat  every  shot  like  Pike  is  absurd.  It's 
just  absurd.  There  isn't  anything  that's  going  to  vent  like  Pike, 
because  we  don't  do  those  things  anymore.  We  will  never  duplicate 
Pike,  and  yet  we  pretend  to  the  world,  and  to  society,  and  to  the 
President  of  the  United  States,  that  this  shot  we're  considering 
could  come  out  like  Pike  did.  We  don't  intend  to  communicate  that 
message,  but  that's  what  we  do,  and  it's  just  not  true.  It's  not  going 
to  come  out  like  Pike,  because  Pike  had  too  many  great  oddities. 

Pike  is  what  really  brought  us  to  every  detail  going  through  the 
hands  of  the  containment  people.  We  said,  "No  more  are  we  going 
to  take  anybody's  word  for  anything."  The  Pike  experience  was 
profound  for  us,  because  that's  when  we  realized  that  no  one  person 
was  knowledgeable  about  everything  on  a  shot.  I  was  responsible  for 
certain  things,  but  not  everything.  After  Pike  we  began  to  function 
in  what  I'll  say  is  a  modern  way.  We  had  a  meeting  in  which  the 
bomb  designer  had  to  come  and  swear  he  knew  what  the  yield  would 
be.  That  really  came  as  a  result  of  Pike.  Before,  it  was  by  chance. 
You  knew  what  you  knew  by  who  you  happened  to  talk  to,  but  if 
people  were  on  vacation,  or  you  were  on  vacation,  you  didn't  talk 
to  them,  and  you  didn't  know  whatever  it  was  they  could  have  told 
you.  I  learned  a  bitter  lesson  on  Pike,  which  was  that  I  thought  I 
knew  what  theshotwas  and  I  didn't.  I  didn't  know  the  yield,  I  didn't 
know  the  geologic  setting,  and  I  didn't  know  about  the  sand.  All 
these  things  came  out  in  the  wash. 

Bob  Bass,  Sandia,  Albuquerque,  was  doing  instrumentation 
work  on  the  hydrodynamic  yield  measurements  that  Los  Alamos 
was  doing  at  that  time.  He  also  had  information  that  Brownlee 
didn’t  have. 


86 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Bass:  Pike  could  have  been  foretold.  1  was  on  the  instrumen¬ 
tation  crew.  We  were  doing  hydrodynamic  yield  measurements  on 
Pike,  and  we  had  three  satellite  holes.  Our  job  was  to  instrument 
these  satellite  holes.  We  had  a  guy  named  ]im  Greenwald,  and  he 
liked  to  play  with  TV.  He  was  our  installation  engineer  when  we 
were  lowering  these  slifers  and/ or  time  of  arrival  gauges  down  these 
holes.  Pike,  of  course,  wasn't  very  deep.  Well,  Jim  called  me  and 
said,  "You've  never  seen  such  a  mess  in  your  entire  life.  I  lower  my 
TV  camera  down  there,  and  it's  a  cavern.  I've  got  communication 
between  every  one  of  my  satellite  holes,  all  the  way  down.  I  go  a 
hundred  feet  down  and  there's  no  sandpile  down  there.  There's 
nothing  but  a  labyrinth  of  tunnels." 

Well,  we  tried  to  put  in  enough  stemming  to  fill  up  that  cavern, 
but  we  didn't  get  it  done.  We  flat  didn't  get  it  done.  We  got  it  done 
for  a  while,  but  then  it  would  start  again.  We  knew  that  site  was 
Swiss  cheese.  That  shot  was  sitting  there  waiting  to  vent. 

Brownlee  The  first  political  fallout  was  about  the  fallout.  It  was 

on  Las  Vegas,  and  it  also  went  straight  toward  Mexico  City.  I  think 
somebody  in  the  embassy  read  something  and  didn't  know  what  he 
read,  and  it  never  really  did  get  reported  in  a  sensible  way.  I  don't 
believe  you'll  find  any  record  of  a  measurement  having  been  made 
in  Mexico  City,  but  I  believe  there  was. 

Then  AI  Graves  had  a  meeting,  and  I  went,  and  Westerfelt,  and 
for  the  first  time  we  put  together  all  the  things  that  were  wrong. 
And  I  was  appalled.  So  we,  at  the  second  level,  bared  our  breasts 
and  said,  "Well,  we  had  done  this,  and  we  had  not  done  that,  and 
the  yield  was  quite  a  bit  higher  than  we  were  expecting,  etc."  Then 
Washington  came  down  hard  on  us  on  all  those  points,  but  they 
knew  these  things  because  we  told  them  about  them. 

The  thing  they  knew  was  that  it  had  crossed  the  border.  We 
made  lots  of  promises  of  brand  new  procedures,  which  indeed  we 
did  initiate.  And  we  really  changed  our  working  relationships  after 
Pike,  between  the  people  at  the  Laboratory,  and  the  people  in  the 
field  doing  the  engineering  and  drilling.  1  remember  that  as  being 
profound.  We  said,  "This  will  never  happen  again." 


87 


4 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 

As  time  went  by,  the  tolerance  of  releases  of  radioactivity  from 
the  underground  detonations  at  the  NTS  diminished  until  it  became 
obvious  to  the  Laboratories  and  the  DNA  that  serious  effort  must  be 
given  to  all  the  questions  that  such  releases  raised.  And  the  list  of 
questions  was  daunting.  What  was  it  that  prevented  such  enormous 
energy  releases  from  rupturing  the  ground  and  thereby  releasing  the 
gases,  steam,  and  radioactivity  to  the  atmosphere?  Obviously  it  was 
related  to  the  amount  of  material  over  the  detonation.  In  what  way 
did  the  necessary  amount  of  material  depend  on  what  the  material 
was?  How  was  it  related  to  the  chemical  composition  of  the 
material,  the  strength  of  the  material,  which  in  turn  is  related  to  the 
amount  of  water  in  the  material?  How  does  the  material  react  to 
pressures  of  millions  of  atmospheres,  and  to  temperatures  of  many 
tens  of  thousands  of  degrees?  Does  it  matter  if  the  material  is 
fractured  or  faulted,  and  if  does,  how?  What  pressures  and  tempera¬ 
tures  actually  are  created  in  the  material,  and  how  do  they  decay 
with  time? 

The  original  thoughts  about  doing  experiments  underground 
arose  from  pressures  to  reduce  off-site  fallout,  and  desires  to  make 
the  operations  easier  to  carry  out.  Contamination  of  the  shot  sites, 
and  radiation  exposures  to  people  working  in  the  field  gave  addi¬ 
tional  incentives  to  the  Laboratories  to  find  different  ways  to 
conduct  the  tests.  In  a  similar  way,  the  releases  that  occured  on 
some  of  the  underground  shots  were  a  problem  to  those  trying  to 
collect  experimental  data.  At  first,  political  pressures  to  achieve 
better  containment  were  minimal,  but  by  the  time  of  Baneberry  in 
1970  they  became  controlling. 

Olsen:  It  must  have  been  late  '65  that  I  started  to  do  things 
in  containment.  There  had  been  several  leaks,  but  the  political 
climate  of  the  time  was  sort  of,  "So  what?"  But  the  Test  Program 
people  really  didn't  like  getting  trailer  parks  exposed,  because 
virtually  all  the  shot  data  was  on  film,  which  turned  black  if  it  got 
irradiated,  and  there  went  the  data.  If  you  put  the  trailer  park 
upwind,  nobody  really  cared  if  you  leaked  a  little  bit.  But  the  AEC 


88 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


people  eventually  began  to  think  that  we  ought  to  be  a  little  more 
careful.  The  straw  that  broke  the  camel's  back  was  a  thing  called 
Diluted  Waters,  which  was  shot  in  Frenchman  Flat  in  June  of  65. 

I  remember  I  was  working  on  something  in  Yucca  at  the  time. 

1  was  driving  over  the  old  Burma  Road,  and  heard  the  countdown 
for  Diluted  Waters  on  the  net,  so  I  parked  the  car  and  watched  it. 
At  zero  time  there  was  a  little  dust,  and  a  few  seconds  later  a  big 
cloud  came  out.  A  few  other  cars  had  stopped,  and  the  guys 
watched  for  a  while,  and  then  we  decided,  "Oh  well,  another  one, 
and  we  started  our  cars  and  went  out  to  Yucca  Flat. 

After  I  got  back  to  Livermore,  my  division  leader,  Jim  Caroth- 
ers  called  me  into  his  office,  and  asked  me  if  1  would  be  interested 
in  something  called  containment.  It  seemed  the  AEC  had  gotten  a 
little  worried  that  we  were  having  some  problems,  and  Diluted 
Waters  had  kind  of  sensitized  enough  people  that  the  AEC  was  going 
to  form  an  investigating  committee  to  look  into  it,  because  we  had 
guaranteed  we  had  solved  the  problems.  We  were  involved  even 
though  it  was  a  DASA  shot.  Now,  we  thought  we  had  solved  some 
of  the  line-of-sight  problems  on  earlier  things,  going  back  to  Eagle, 

in  '63. 

Carothers:  Mr.  Olsen,  since  Eagle  released  enough  energy  to 
create  an  explosion  at  the  surface  which  completely  destroyed  the 
surface  structure  and  the  experiments  thereon,  I  cannot  say  that  i 
would  use  Eagle  as  an  example  of  how  you  had  solved  things. 

Olsen:  Well,  no,  but  it  led  us  to  things  that  needed  solving,  let 
us  say. 

So,  in  '65  this  Jim  Carothers  asked  me  to  look  into  containment, 
and  it  turned  out  at  that  time  it  had  to  do  primarily  with  line-of-sight 
shots  and  the  diagnostics  thereof.  So,  we  went  scrounging  for 
recording  equipment  for  slow  diagnostics,  as  compared  to  reaction 
history.  We  were  looking  at  tens  of  microseconds,  and  millisecond 
response  rather  than  nanosecond  things.  We  got  help  from  EG&G, 
primarily  Santa  Barbara.  And  some  from  EG&G  Albuquerque, 
which  at  that  time  existed. 

We  were  looking  basically  at  flow  in  the  pipe  itself;  time  of 
arrival,  pressures,  as  well  as  radiation  coming  up  the  stemming  and 
the  pipe  itself.  We  were  looking  at  how  you  could  attenuate  flow 
in  a  pipe.  If  you  want  to  do  that  you  obviously  have  to  look  at  what's 

going  on. 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


89 


Carothers:  How  did  you  do  that?  Pipe  flow  is  still  an 
interesting,  difficult  problem. 

Olsen:  That  is  true.  We  tried  lots  of  things,  some  of  which 
worked,  and  some  of  which  didn't.  We  used  ordinary  pin  switches, 
and  pressure  pins.  We  used  pressure  transducers.  We  used  optical 
time  of  arrival  things,  slifer  cables  both  inside  and  outside  the  pipe. 
We  used  radiation  detectors. 

Carothers:  And  Io  and  behold,  you  discovered  that  indeed 
there  was  a  lot  of  pipe  flow,  and  it  often  came  right  out  the  top  of 
the  pipe. 

Olsen:  That's  right.  And  it  got  to  where  we  were  measuring 
differential  pressures,  we  hoped,  across  closure  mechanisms.  If  you 
saw  zero  above,  and  a  lot  below,  it  said  that  thing  really  closed,  and 
really  worked.  These  were  man-made  closures,  as  opposed  to 
ground  shock  driven.  There  were  high  explosive  driven,  and 
mechanically  driven,  closures.  And  there  were  lots  of  varieties  of 
those.  There  were  ball  valves,  and  flapper  valves,  and  so  on. 

Carothers:  Did  any  of  them  work? 

Olsen:  Yes,  some  of  them  did,  although  some  of  them  didn't. 
In  fact,  some  of  them  were  probably  worse  than  if  they  hadn't  been 
there.  Probably  the  worst  one  we  put  in  was  a  thing  called  HE  flaps. 
They  were  dimples  that  had  been  cut  in  the  pipe  at  alternating  spots. 
You  put  little  pads  of  HE  on  them,  and  shoved  pieces  of  the  pipe  in, 
rather  than  trying  to  close  it  symmetrically.  The  idea  was  to  obscure 
the  pipe  by  pushing  things  in.  One  version  of  these  flaps  was  to  cut 
the  pipe  at  the  bottom  of  the  flap,  and  shove  this  flap  in  so  that 
something  coming  up  the  pipe  would  come  to  the  area  of  the  pipe 
where  this  piece  had  been  pushed  across,  and  the  flow  would  then 
just  go  out  into  the  stemming. 

Carothers:  Say,  that  sounds  clever. 

Olsen:  That  was  really  clever.  Unfortunately,  this  thing 
weakened  the  pipe  so  much  that  what  it  did  was  put  a  tab  of  material 
out  in  the  flow,  and  that  tab  could  rip  off  very  easily.  So,  the  whole 
thing  went  right  on  up  the  pipe. 


90 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


We  had  a  few  other  disasters  on  line-of-sight  pipes.  Some,  like 
Tapestry,  weren't  too  bad.  The  reason  it  leaked  was  that  some 
valves  at  surface  ground  zero  jammed  a  bit  and  didn't  close  all  the 
way. 

Carothers:  Did  you  ever  have  a  successfully  contained  pipe 
shot? 

Olsen:  Oh  yes.  Probably  the  best  ones  were  Crew  and  Flax. 
They  were  unusual  in  that  the  pipe  terminated  underground,  and  we 
had  the  things  there  that  we  wanted  to  expose  and  follow  for  a  time. 
Obviously  you  had  to  close  the  pipe,  or  there  wouldn't  be  anything 
there  to  look  at.  Both  of  those  events  were  quite  successful. 
Packard  was  another  one  where  we  had  exposure  stations  about 
halfway  down  the  pipe,  and  we  wanted  to  pull  them  up  the  pipe  to 
recover  them.  That  was  quite  successful.  We  closed  everything  off 
below  the  exposure  stations. 

By  then  we  knew  about  things  that  didn't  work,  like  the  HE 
flaps  that  just  put  more  mass  into  the  flow.  We  knew  not  to  put  an 
HE  closure,  even  though  the  closure  worked,  in  too  close,  because 
the  ground  shock  could  simply  go  around  it,  as  if  it  weren't  even 
there,  and  still  have  enough  energy  to  pour  energy  into  the  line-of- 
sight  pipe.  So,  you  have  to  put  even  a  fast  HE  closure  far  enough 
out  so  the  ground  shock  doesn't  just  envelop  it  and  keep  going.  We 
learned  that  closer  isn't  necessarily  better.  We  learned  how  to  build 
valves  that  would  seat  in  the  environment.  We  learned  how  to 
decouple  them,  if  necessary,  with  joints  and  things  like  that,  to 
modify  the  environment  so  they  would  survive. 

We  had  a  better  capability,  by  then,  to  look  at  the  energy  in  the 
front  end,  and  to  look  at  things  where  we  could  limit  the  energy 
going  in.  Often,  in  the  early  shots  the  experimenters  wanted 
everything  they  could  get.  So,  they  wanted  bigger  and  bigger 
apertures. 

Carothers:  That's  still  true.  The  experimenters  always  want 
more  than  they  can  have. 

Olsen:  That  wasn't  always  true  though.  On  Flax,  for  example, 
we  put  a  segment  of  a  pie-type  collimator  in  the  front  of  the  pipe 
to  cut  down  on  the  flux.  That,  of  course,  made  it  easier  to  close. 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


91 


because  part  of  the  path  was  already  plugged.  When  the  experi¬ 
menters  got  to  be  a  little  less  grabby  about  wanting  everything  it 
sometimes  made  things  easier.  But  a  lot  of  it  was  trial  and  error. 

The  Livermore  Hupmobile  event,  fired  on  January  18,  1968, 
released  activity  that  resulted  in  a  major  loss  of  data,  and  radioac¬ 
tivity  was  detected  off-site.  It  did  not  result  in  the  kind  of  long- 
lasting  operational  changes  that  Pike  did,  but  it  did  lead  to  the 
formation  of  a  separate  group,  responsible  for  the  design  of  the 
containment  plan,  at  Livermore.  Cliff  Olsen  and  Billy  Hudson 
became  two  of  the  first  members  of  that  group. 

Olsen:  In  those  days  I  think  ninety  percent  of  the  reason  for 
expending  effort  on  containment  related  to  data  loss,  rather  than 
pressure  from  Washington.  That  begin  to  change  probably  around 
'67  to  '68.  It  may  have  been  as  a  result  of  Hupmobile,  because  the 
people  in  Washington  who  supplied  the  money,  even  though  they 
were  not  so  worried  about  the  loss  of  data  as  the  experimenters,  got 
antsy  about  dumping  money  into  these  things  and  not  getting 
anything  in  return.  Hupmobile  was  quite  expensive  for  the  time.  I 
think  that  may  have  been  the  first  thing  beyond  strictly  experiment¬ 
ers  wondering  why  their  film  was  black. 

Hudson:  Hupmobile  turned  out  to  be  a  containment  fiasco,  in 
that  a  lot  of  the  film  data  was  lost  due  to  the  radiation  release.  The 
decision  was  made  at  the  Associate  Director  level  to  form  a 
containment  group,  and  to  try  to  put  some  serious  effort  into 
understanding  containment  and  saving  the  film.  ]im  Carothers 
asked  me  to  join  that  group,  and  it  appeared  to  me  to  be  an  offer 
I  couldn't  refuse. 

I  believe  it  was  in  late  1  968  that  happened.  For  about  the  first 
two  years  Bill  McMaster  and  I  used  to  have  some  words  now  and 
then  about  how  this  surely  wouldn't  be  more  than  a  two  year 
problem,  and  then  we  could  get  back  to  doing  some  science.  "We'll 
figure  this  out,  won't  take  more  than  two  years,  then  we'll  get  back 
to  interesting  physics."  Fortunately,  it  got  more  and  more  interest¬ 
ing,  because  it  turned  out  to  be  much  more  than  a  two  year  problem. 

Carothers:  I'm  surprised  that  the  containment  group  came 
along  so  late,  because  there  were  a  number  of  Livermore  events 
earlier  that  had  been,  by  today's  standards,  quite  catastrophic 
containment  failures. 


92 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Hudson:  Personally,  it  was  my  impression  that  we  became 
interested  in  having  a  containment  group  because  so  much  data  was 
being  lost  on  experiments  like  Hupmobile.  On  the  earlier  events 
there  weren't  that  many  experiments,  so  it  was  a  relatively  small 
loss,  even  though  they  perhaps  lost  a  major  fraction  of  what  they  had 
on  the  event.  It  was  a  small  loss  compared  to  the  loss  on  Hupmobile. 
And,  programmatic  people  decided  that  since  this  was  the  direction 
they  wanted  to  go,  bigger  and  more  comprehensive  experiments, 
something  had  to  be  done  about  containment  so  they  would  have 
some  confidence  that  after  spending  all  that  money  on  the  test  they 
would  get  the  data  back.  The  primary  problem  then  was  to  protect 
the  film  so  the  prompt  diagnostics  folks  could  go  back  to  the 
Laboratory,  read  the  film,  and  tell  the  bomb  designers  what  they  did 
right  or  what  they  did  wrong.  It  was  not  to  protect  the  environment; 
it  was  to  protect  the  data. 

The  Partial  Test  Ban  Treaty  had  been  signed  in  1963,  several 
years  earlier.  The  Treaty  said  we  were  not  to  do  any  experiments 
where  radioactive  material  would  go  beyond  the  national  bound¬ 
aries  of  the  U.S.  That  was  a  primary  guideline;  no  radiation  across 
our  international  borders.  But  in  fact,  measures  had  already  been 
taken  to  pretty  much  limit  the  escape  across  the  border.  Just  by  the 
act  of  putting  a  few  hundred  feet  of  dirt  over  the  device  you  almost 
always  eliminated  radiation  getting  to  the  border.  There  were  a  few 
events  after  the  early  sixties  that  released  material  that  may  have 
gone  across  the  border,  but  they  were  very  few.  It  was  mostly  a  local 
problem,  because  the  radiation  leakage  would  be  confined  almost  to 
the  site  of  the  event  itself,  or  maybe  a  little  larger.  But,  it  was  that 
local  radiation  that  was  causing  the  damage  to  the  film  containing 
the  data,  and  that  was  the  kind  of  problem  most  often  encountered. 

If  we  had  a  release  that  got  up  to  the  neighborhood  of  ten 
thousand  curies  there  was  a  possibility  of  activity  getting  off  site. 
Less  than  a  thousand  curies  was  of  little  or  no  concern  to  the  general 
public,  or  the  people  in  Washington.  However,  it  was  of  great 
concern  to  the  people  whose  film  was  in  the  recording  trailers. 

In  the  late  1960's,  early  1970's,  they  were  doing  some 
exposure  experiments,  with  an  open  line-of-sight  pipe  to  the 
surface.  It  took  a  few  tries  before  the  hardware  was  properly 
designed  to  stop  the  rush  of  hot  gases  and  refractory  products  to  the 
surface,  but  that  problem  was  pretty  well  solved  by  the  time  the 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


93 


containment  group  was  formed.  I  don't  think  people  realized  it,  but 
we  didn't  see  much  more  of  the  Hupmobile  type  releases  on  our 
Iine-of-sight  shots  after  we  formed  the  containment  group. 

The  Baneberry  event,  detonated  on  December  1  8,  1 970  with  a 
yield  of  1 0  kilotons,  was  the  watershed  in  the  history  of  containment. 
It  was  fired  in  an  emplacement  hole  in  Area  8,  and  had  a  vertical, 
non-divergent  line-of-sight  pipe.  It  vented  spectacularly  through  a 
fissure,  a  little  over  three  minutes  after  the  device  was  fired.  The 
cloud  of  dust  and  debris  rose  some  12,000  feet,  and  was  reported  to 
have  been  seen  by  people  attheNVO  offices  in  Las  Vegas.  The  total 
release  is  today  given  as  6,900,000  curies  (H+12  hours).  Interest¬ 
ingly,  almost  all  of  the  activity  was  the  volatile  and  gaseous  ele¬ 
ments,  so  there  was  little  fallout  deposition  from  Baneberry.  The 
integrated  total  activity  in  the  fallout  pattern,  on  the  ground,  was  a 
small  fraction  of  that  in  the  Pike  pattern. 

The  wind  patterns  before  the  shot  indicated  the  transport  of  any 
effluent  to  the  northeast,  and  so  the  Area  1 2  camp,  to  the  west  of  the 
shot  site,  had  not  been  cleared  of  the  people  staying  there.  However, 
surface  winds  carried  some  of  the  activity  to  the  west.  During  the 
time  it  took  to  alert  the  people  in  the  camp,  and  to  clear  the  area,  a 
number  of  people  received  radiation  exposures,  and  some  of  those 
filed  lawsuits  in  the  following  years,  alleging  damage  to  their  health 
and  longevity. 

The  AEC  allowed  no  more  detonations  for  some  six  months 
while  a  committee,  called  the  Vinceguerra  Committee,  after  the 
Chairman,  examined  the  causes  of  the  venting,  and  the  method  of 
operations  at  the  Test  Site.  In  the  report  of  the  committee  several 
recommendations  were  made  for  changes  in  the  way  future  test 
operations  should  be  carried  out,  and  how  improvements  could  be 
made  in  the  way  the  containment  aspects  of  an  event  were  evaluated. 
One  of  the  recommendations  was  that  the  Test  Evaluation  Panel 
should  be  reconstituted,  and  a  new  Charter  developed  for  the  new 
Panel.  The  Containment  Evaluation  Panel,  as  the  new  Panel  was 
called,  consisted  of  a  Chairman,  one  member  and  an  alternate 
nominated  by  each  of  LASL,  LRL,  Sandia,  DNA,  USGS,  and  the 
Desert  Research  Institute.  In  addition,  provision  was  made  for  the 
Manager,  NVO,  to  appoint  one  or  more  consultants.  Members 


94  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

nominated  by  particular  organizations,  or  consultants  recommended 
by  the  Chairman,  were  formally  appointed  by  the  Manager,  N  VO,  to 
serve  on  what  was  an  advisory  Panel  to  him. 

Carter  Broyles,  Sandia,  was  one  of  the  first  members  of  the 

CEP. 


Broyles:  I  think  the  members  of  the  Panel  all  recognized  there 
was  a  political  need  to  be  met,  to  prove  to  the  nation  that  we  were 
paying  attention.  And  clearly  it  was  evident  in  the  series  of 
proposed  charters,  and  hassling  that  went  on  between  Nevada  and 
the  Labs  and  Washington  on  just  what  the  charter  should  say.  I  think 
I  viewed  from  the  very  beginning  that  the  CEP  took  it's  role  as  a 
technical  judgment  body  seriously,  and  more  than  just  political 
window  dressing. 

In  fact,  I  think  some  members  perhaps  were  over-enthralled. 
Not  so  much  over-zealous,  but  perhaps  they  did  not  have  a  full 
appreciation  of  the  limits  of  our  technical  knowledge,  and  therefore 
tended  to  give  themselves  more  credit  for  how  sure  they  were  of  any 
technical  facts  than  we  really  were.  They  didn't  necessarily 
recognize  the  technical  limitations,  and  the  lack  of  knowledge  of 
geophysics  and  geo-engineering,  and  what  the  characteristics  of  the 
real  world  were,  how  variable  they  were,  and  the  limitations  of  the 
calculations. 

Clearly  various  parts  of  the  structure  looked  different  from 
different  perspectives,  and  the  CEP,  I  think,  was  many  different 
things  to  many  different  people.  But  the  Panel  itself,  from  the  very 
beginning  took  its  role  seriously,  and  took  it  as  a  technical  challenge 
to  do  the  best  job  they  could,  because  it  was  obvious  that  the  world 
was  going  to  be  different  after  Baneberry. 

The  Livermore  containment  group  had  been  in  existence  for 
some  two  years  when  the  Baneberry  venting  occurred.  During  those 
years  they  were  supported  as  part  of  the  overall  testing  effort,  but 
their  authority  to  affect  a  particular  shot  was  questionable.  That 
changed  significantly  after  Baneberry. 

Hudson:  Following  Baneberry  the  Test  Program  was  shut  down 
for  six  months,  and  the  people  who  designed  bombs  and  wanted  to 
get  data  back  were  suddenly  aware  that  containment  was  a  very 
important  factor  to  be  considered.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


95 


movement  directed  toward  the  idea  that  we  shouldn't  have  anything 
out  at  all.  If  it  was  above  background,  it  was  too  much.  It  was  clear 
that  was  where  people  were  headed. 

There  were  about  a  dozen  people  in  the  containment  group  at 
that  time,  as  I  recall,  and  I  would  guess  that  two-thirds  of  them  were 
involved  with  calculations.  This  is  when  the  major  effort  was 
directed  at  adapting  the  codes  that  first  had  been  used  for  bombs, 
later  to  describe  what's  going  on  in  the  pipe,  to  describing  what's 
going  on  in  the  earth.  It  was  clear  that  the  interaction  between  the 
bomb  and  the  ground  might  be  the  ultimate  worry,  not  just  the 
interaction  between  the  bomb  and  the  pipe. 

Carothers:  Clearly  demonstrated  by  the  Baneberry  venting. 
Why  didn't  the  containment  group  prevent  that? 

Hudson:  Well,  that  is  an  interesting  question.  At  that  time  the 
containment  program  was  really  under  the  umbrella  of  the  Test 
Director  and  the  operational  folks.  We  didn't  have  a  Containment 
Evaluation  Panel.  In  those  days  we  had  the  Test  Evaluation  Panel, 
and  the  Test  Evaluation  Panel  was  more  concerned  with  having  a 
successful  experiment  than  they  were  with  containment.  As  a 
result,  when  containment  aspects  of  an  event  were  considered,  they 
were  presented  by  the  operational  side  of  the  program. 

We  in  the  containment  group  were  operating  in  a  support 
mode.  If  they  wanted  to  pay  attention  to  us  they  did.  If  they 
thought  that  the  concerns  we  had  wouldn't  lead  to  an  expensive  loss 
of  data,  then  they  didn't.  The  objective  was  still  to  bring  back  the 
data.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  brought  back  data  on  Baneberry. 

What  we  did  say  was  that  we  should  run  some  logs  in  that  hole, 
and  find  out  what  kind  of  densities  and  velocities  we  really  were 
shooting  in.  We  did  ask  for  them,  but  we  didn't  get  them,  because 
we  couldn't  make  a  good  enough  case  for  it.  We  couldn't  say,  "Hey, 
if  the  velocity  is  below  this,  or  the  density  is  below  this  or  above  that, 
we're  going  to  have  a  release  problem,  or  a  vent."  We  just  knew 
there  were  questions  we  would  like  to  have  had  answered  before  the 
event.  We  knew  there  were  some  things  that  were  new  and 
different,  and  that  we  didn't  understand. 

If  we  could  have  said,  "Hey,  you're  going  to  lose  a  lot  of  data," 
then  we  would  have  gotten  their  attention.  But  as  far  as  containment 
per  se  is  concerned,  we  didn't  have  a  lot  of  leverage.  And,  we  didn't 
know  we  were  going  to  have  a  horrific  containment  problem.  We 


96 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


just  knew  that  there  were  some  things  about  the  site  that  were 
unusual,  and  that  was  our  cause  for  worry.  But  we  didn't  have  any 
theory  as  to  why  we  were  worried.  We  were  just  worried  because 
it  was  new  and  different.  Without  having  a  really  logical,  well 
thought  out  reason  for  delaying  things,  it  was  hard  to  give  credence 
to  our  fears. 

Carothers:  You  might  contrast  that  with  today,  almost  twenty- 
five  years  later.  Today  if  the  containment  group  said,  "We  have 
fears  and  we  don't  know  the  answers,"  you  would  be  listened  to 
more,  I  believe. 

Hudson:  I  think  there's  no  doubt  about  it.  The  attitude  today 
is  that  we  have  to  demonstrate  why  somebody's  fears  aren't  really 
a  problem.  In  those  days  somebody  had  to  demonstrate  why  a  fear 
was  a  problem.  Today  we're  almost  in  the  position  of  having  to 
prove  negatives.  Just  the  opposite  was  true  in  the  past.  Then  we 
had  to  prove  that  there  was  a  problem.  Today  we  have  to 
demonstrate  that  there's  not  a  problem  -  -  as  well  as  we  can. 

Recognizing  the  changes  that  were  taking  place,  and  the  strong 
requirements  that  were  being  developed  for  complete  containment, 
Los  Alamos  organized  a  formal  containment  group  in  1970.  Bob 
Brownlee  had  been  working  on  the  containment  of  underground 
events  since  1956.  In  1966  he  was  joined  by  Carl  Keller,  and  they 
did  a  number  of  calculations  and  experiments  related  to  line-of- 
sight  shots,  but  it  was  not  until  after  Baneberry  that  a  containment 
group,  per  se,  was  formed. 

Carothers:  When  did  there  get  to  be  somebody  working  on 
containment  besides  you,  or  when  did  there  get  to  be  a  defined 
containment  activity? 

Brownlee:  It  was  at  Baneberry  time  that  we  actually  formed  a 
containment  group,  and  I  became  the  group  leader.  We  finally 
decided  that  between  Baneberry  and  when  we  started  testing  again. 
The  first  step  in  that  direction  was  actually  back  in  1 966,  when  Ogle 
said,  "Get  somebody  and  teach  them."  So,  I  hired  Carl  Keller.  He 
was  young  then.  I'm  the  same  age  now  as  then,  but  he's  older  for 
some  reason.  I  hired  Carl,  and  just  spent  time  with  him.  We  started 
going  through  things,  and  learning,  and  doing  things,  and  1  started 
transferring  jobs  to  him.  Before  that  some  people  were  named  as 
doing  containment.  That  is,  there  was  somebody  in  J-6,  and  there 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


97 


was  somebody  somewhere  else,  there  was  me  and  Carl.  These 
people  stayed  in  their  own  organizations,  but  they  were  supposed  to 
work  on  containment.  In  effect  we  had  a  very  small  containment 
group  scattered  around  the  Lab. 

Carothers:  When  you  say,  "formed  a  containment  group," 
does  that  mean  these  people  now  physically  came  to  work  in  one 
area? 

Brownlee:  Yes.  J-9  was  formed  at  that  time.  Jack  House  was 
in  J-8.  He  had  a  little  training  in  geology,  so  I  latched  on  to  Jack 
right  away,  and  got  Jack  into  the  group.  Then,  after  we  had  that 
group,  I  hired  Fred  App.  I  started  hiring  people  for  the  purpose  of 
containment.  Bob  Sharp  and  Tom  Weaver  were  both  in  J-9,  the 
containment  group.  And  so  we  had  some  pretty  good  guys,  and  for 
the  first  time  we  had  some  geologists. 

So,  the  containment  effort,  as  you  see  it  now,  is  really  derived 
from  that  containment  group,  J-9.  That's  when  we  started  down 
that  path. 

House:  I  had  never  actually  heard  anything  about  containment 
until  that  December  morning  in  1970  when  Baneberry  vented.  I 
happened  to  be  in  Mercury  in  the  J-3  operations  group  office, 
waiting  to  ride  into  town  with  Bob  Newman,  who  was  then  one  of 
our  Test  Directors,  to  get  a  plane  back  to  Los  Alamos.  There  was 
this  ominous  gray  cloud  rising  up  over  the  Gate  200  pass.  I  didn't 
know  what  it  was,  but  Newman  proceeded  to  tell  me  that  LRL  had 
a  really  bad  leak.  We  could  see  the  cloud  all  the  way  into  town.  I 
happened  to  be  sitting  on  the  left  side  of  the  aircraft  as  we  flew 
towards  Albuquerque,  and  I  could  still  see  that  cloud  when  we  were 
clear  out  over  the  Grand  Canyon,  until  the  sight  angle  became 
diminished  to  the  point  where  you  could  no  longer  see  it.  That  was 
my  first  introduction  to  containment. 

About  two  months  later  I  got  a  call  from  Ogle  saying  that  I  was 
being  temporarily  reassigned  to  a  new  group  that  was  being  formed 
under  Bob  Brownlee.  It  was  to  be  a  containment  group  called  J-9. 
Apparently  Ogle  told  Brownlee  that  he  had  to  form  up  a  purpose- 
oriented  containment  group,  and  he  could  pick  any  of  the  J  group 
numbers  not  in  use,  and  Bob  picked  J-9. 


98 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


The  people  who  were  in  J-9  were  Brownlee,  Bob  Sharp,  Carl 
Keller,  and  a  few  other  folks,  probably  less  than  ten,  that  Brownlee 
had  assembled  from  other  groups  in  the  Laboratory.  So  we  had  this 
little  cadre  of  dedicated  personnel  who  were  to  do  "containment," 
whatever  that  was.  I  didn't  know  anything  about  containment 
except  probably  how  to  spell  it. 

At  that  time,  in  early  1971,  we  were  in  the  six  months  test 
moratorium  mandated  by  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission  post- 
Baneberry.  Now  we  were  supposed  to  have  information,  geological 
information,  about  the  shot  sites.  All  the  emplacement  holes  that 
Los  Alamos  had  in  inventory  were  cased.  How  can  we  do  site 
characterization  and  examine  the  material  properties  in  a  cased 
hole?  So,  we  initiated  a  drilling  program  for  exploratory  holes,  in 
close  proximity  to  the  emplacement  holes,  that  could  be  sampled 
and  logged. 

We  initiated  our  program  of  exploratory  drilling,  and  sampling, 
and  so  forth.  Because  we  didn't  have  the  necessary  expertise  to  do 
the  geologic  analysis,  the  data  went  to  the  USGS  at  Denver,  where 
Evan  Jenkins  and  Paul  Orkild  and  their  people  did  the  analysis.  The 
USGS  would  then  put  together  a  site  characterization  package  -  -  the 
cross  sections  and  the  whole  nine  yards.  Livermore  at  that  time  was 
able  to  do  those  kinds  of  things  in-house,  because  they  had  the 
necessary  personnel.  Billy  Hudson  and  Cliff  Olsen  had  been  doing 
containment  work  for  a  few  years,  and  they  were  our  distant 
colleagues  in  this  new,  for  me,  world. 

It  was  a  real  circus  in  those  early  days  of  1971  while  we  were 
still  learning  the  containment  business.  We  didn't  have  any 
designated  presenter  for  the  events  that  came  before  the  new 
Containment  Evaluation  Panel,  as  Livermore  did.  As  I  recall,  Billy 
Hudson  was  the  designated  presenter.  And  we  had  no  containment 
scientists  as  we  know  today,  or  event  managers,  as  some  people  call 
them  when  they're  trying  to  figure  out  what  a  containment  scientist 
is.  Well,  how  do  we  do  this  thing,  which  we  had  never  done? 

The  very  first  event  that  was  presented  by  Los  Alamos  to  the 
CEP  was  a  shot  in  Area  3.  Bob  Brownlee  sat  at  the  CEP  table  and 
read  the  prospectus  to  the  Panel.  I  was  sitting  in  the  audience  along 
with  essentially  all  the  rest  of  J-9,  there  being  only  a  few  of  us,  and 
that's  how  the  presentation  was  made.  The  USGS  sat  in  the 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs  99 

audience  and  responded  to  whatever  geological  or  geophysical 
questions  were  posed  by  the  Panel.  Bill  Twenhofei  was  on  the  Panel, 
and  he  was  the  USGS  representative. 

Carothers:  No.  Bill  was  on  the  Panel,  but  Jack,  there  aren't 
representatives  of  organizations  on  the  Panel.  There  are  indepen¬ 
dent  experts.  They  may  make  their  living  by  working  for  some 
organization,  but  they  don't  represent  that  organization. 

House:  Yes.  i  do  understand  that  you  do  vyork  hard  to  try  to 
maintain  that  distinction. 

Anyhow,  Brownlee  soon  became  dissatisfied  with  this  mecha¬ 
nism  of  reading  the  prospectus  to  the  Panel,  and  he  concluded  that 
Los  Alamos  would  need  a  designated  presenter.  He  also  decided 
that  we  needed  individuals  who  would  be  assigned  to  prepare  the 
prospectus.  They  were  to  pull  everything  together  from  all  the 
different  venues,  like  the  engineering  folks  who  were  doing  the 
diagnostics  rack  design,  and  the  operations  folks  who  were  drilling 
the  holes,  and  backfilling  them,  and  so  forth.  Carl  Keller  had  been 
writing  the  prospectuses.  Then  one  day  Brownlee  came  to  myself 
and  Roy  Saunders,  and  said,  "Okay,  we  have  a  couple  of  these  one- 
point  safety  tests,  and  they're  in  these  little  shallow  holes,  and 
they're  not  very  complicated.  Roy,  you  write  one  up,  and  Jack,  you 
do  the  other  one."  And  so  we  did. 

Carl  made  the  presentations  for  a  while.  Then,  I  guess  he 
decided  that  really  wasn't  his  cup  of  tea.  So  Brownlee  called  me  one 
evening  at  home,  and  dropped  this  little  nugget  in  my  lap,  saying 
that  I  was  going  to  start  presenting  all  the  events.  I  was  not  real 
comfortable  with  that.  Bob  prevailed,  as  Bob  always  has,  at  least  in 
my  case,  and  lo  and  behold,  not  too  terribly  long  thereafter  I  was 
standing  at  the  podium  presenting  an  event  to  the  CEP.  Lacking  any 
experience,  I  mimiced  Billy  Hudson  in  my  presentation.  As  time 
evolved,  the  containment  prospectus  preparation  and  presentation 
became  my  task,  with  a  lot  of  support  from  my  colleagues. 

We  continued  on  with  the  USGS  supplying  our  geologic 
packages  until  about  1974  or  1975,  somewhere  along  in  there. 
That  relationship  was  not  always  comfortable  for  the  USGS  people 
up  in  Denver,  because  we  didn't  know,  in  the  early  days,  what  we 
really  wanted  or  needed.  So,  those  guys  didn't  know  quite  how  to 
respond  to  our  needs.  As  a  result,  we  had  some  interesting 
meetings,  hosted  by  the  Lawrence  Radiation  Lab,  about  things  like 


100 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


grain  density  -  -  what  did  we  need  to  measure  in  grain  densities,  and 
how  should  we  do  it?  Should  we  use  the  air  pycnometer,  or  should 
we  use  this  other  kind  of  trap,  or  what?  And  what  should  we  expect 
in  alluvium,  and  what  should  we  expect  in  tuff?  And  how  about  the 
lavas  in  Pahute  Mesa?  So,  there  were  problems  in  determining  data 
needs. 

Then,  in  late  1974  the  USGS  made  an  incredibly  gross  error 
in  the  assessment  of  a  Paleozoic  scarp  location  near  a  hole  in  Area 
4.  That  caused  us  to  have  to  drill  a  special  exploratory  hole,  do 
sidetracking,  and  so  on.  The  ]  Division  management,  Brownlee  in 
particular  -  -  as  an  aside,  Brownlee  had  been  moved  on  from  being 
the  J-9  group  leader  to  being  an  associate  or  assistant  division  leader 
in  the  J  Division  office  -  -  decreed  that  J-9  should  hire  a  geologist, 
and  diminish  our  dependency  on  the  USGS. 

Where  were  we  going  to  get  a  geologist  who  knew  anything 
about  the  Test  Site?  Well,  we  had  Fenix  and  Sisson  geologists  who 
supported  Los  Alamos  as  our  "well-sitters.”  They  sat  the  emplace¬ 
ment  holes,  or  the  exploratory  holes,  as  they  were  being  drilled  on 
the  Test  Site.  So  we  thought,  "Let's  pick  the  guy  assigned  to  Los 
Alamos,  and  let's  hire  that  guy.  He's  got  to  know  something  about 
the  geology  of  our  test  holes." 

We  hired  a  young  man  named  Mike  Ray  from  F8lS.  Mike  came 
to  work  with  me,  and  we  then  hired  a  geophysicist  to  do  well-log 
analysis  on  the  Birdwell  logs  supplied  to  us.  Gradually  Los  Alamos 
developed  enough  of  a  geoscience  capability  that  we  were  able  to 
tell  the  USGS  that  we  didn't  need  their  geologic  packages  anymore, 
because  we  were  going  to  do  that  in-house. 

We,  I  think,  separated  ourselves  from  the  USGS  without 
acrimony.  I  think,  quite  frankly,  the  Survey  was  relieved  to  get  out 
of  that  production  mode.  That's  not  their  cup  of  tea.  They  are 
primarily  a  research  organization,  and  they  don't  like  to  be  called 
and  told,  "Look,  we  needed  this  yesterday.  Where  is  it?"  And  then 
to  be  called  back  and  told,  "Well,  we  got  it,  but  it's  not  right.  Now 
you  need  to  do  this,  and  that."  There  weren't  many  of  those 
occasions,  but  still,  that  didn't  fit  the  Survey's  view  of  themselves. 

So,  here  we  are  in  the  mid-seventies  now,  and  we  have  our  own 
geosciences  capability.  House  is  making  all  the  presentations  and 
writing  all  the  documents,  and  so  forth.  That  went  on  until  1  979, 
when  we  changed  Lab  Directors.  Harold  Agnew  left  the  Laboratory, 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


101 


and  Don  Kerr,  a  former  J  Division  staffer  from  years  before,  took 
over  as  Director.  One  of  the  very  first  things  he  did  was  to  dissolve 
J  Division,  the  field  test  organization.  He  spread  out  the  groups  that 
were  in  J  Division  to  other  divisions,  such  as  WX,  weapons  engineer¬ 
ing.  Then  they  looked  at  the  containment  group  and  said,  "What 
shall  we  do  with  these  guys?"  Well,  Brownlee  was  then  the 
geosciences  division  leader,  and  that  seemed  like  the  right  place  to 
be.  We  do  geoscience  stuff,  and  Brownlee  is  known  in  our 
Laboratory  as  the  father  of  containment  at  Los  Alamos,  and  so  let's 
put  these  guys,  the  J-9  guys,  over  there  in  G  Division,  and  call  them 
G  something  or  other. 

I've  forgotten  why  they  chose  to  dissolve  J  Division.  It  was 
much  to  the  dismay  of  the  people  in  ]  Division.  We  all  ended  up 
working  for  other  existing  divisions  in  the  Laboratory.  The  diagnos¬ 
tic  guys  were  all  put  in  the  Physics  Division,  and  they  were  called  the 
weapons  physics  guys.  The  field  engineering  and  rack  design  guys 
were  put  in  WX,  under  a  management  they  had  not  previously  been 
associated  with. 

Kunkle:  I  was  hired  by  J-9,  but  when  the  paperwork  was  done 
the  group  called  itself  G-6.  By  the  time  I  showed  up  in  1  980  it  was 
calling  itself  G-5.  According  to  rumor  that  was  because  Don  Kerr, 
the  then  Director,  decided  to  get  rid  of  J  Division,  the  field  testing 
division,  in  the  fall  of  1979  because  he  was  concerned  that  a 
comprehensive  test  ban  would  soon  be  enacted,  and  a  field  testing 
division  would  be  something  easily  clipped  out  of  the  budget.  So  he 
decided  to  -  -  I  wouldn't  say  hide  -  -  submerge  those  activities  in 
other  divisions.  One  of  the  divisions  created,  an  artificial  division, 
was  G,  the  Geology  Division,  and  Bob  Brownlee  became  the  division 
leader  of  that. 

House:  Actually,  J-9,  the  containment  group,  came  out  best, 
because  we  were  reassociated  with  our  former  boss,  and  that  worked 
out  reasonably  well  for  us,  and  for  the  containment  organization. 

There  were  three  supporting  groups,  discipline  oriented.  There 
was  geology  and  geochemistry,  geophysics,  and  something  called 
geoanalysis,  which  we  just  called  computer  jocks.  So  we  were  in 
some  common  organization  which  has  metamorphosed  through 
being  called  Geosciences,  then  Earth  and  Space  Sciences,  to  now 
being  called  Earth  and  Environmental  Sciences. 


102 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Then  the  Containment  Project  Office  was  created,  and  I  was 
named  as  the  Deputy  Project  Leader.  In  late  1 980  the  gentleman 
who  had  lasted  but  eight  months  as  the  Principal  Project  Leader 
decided  to  seek  other  employment,  so  he  bailed  out  and  went  to 
another  division  which  had  nothing  whatsoever  to  do  with 
containment.  As  a  result  of  that  Bob  Brownlee  called  me  into  his 
office  one  day  and  said,  "I  intend  to  make  you  the  Containment 
Project  Manager."  I  was  either  too  stupid,  or  too  stunned,  to  say 
no,  and  so  that  became  my  task,  in  addition  to  making  the 
presentations,  and  writing  the  documents,  and  all  this  other  large 
load  of  responsibilities. 

After  two  or  three  months,  maybe  as  many  as  six,  I  went  to 
Brownlee  and  said,  "I  can't  do  all  this.  It's  too  much."  He  said, 
"Well,  what  do  you  want  to  do  then?  How  do  you  want  to  structure 
this?"  I  said,  "I  want  to  follow  Livermore's  model  of  having 
containment  scientists,  or  event  managers.  I  want  to  make  a 
selection  of  people,  and  for  openers  I'll  pick  Fred  App,  who's  one 
of  our  CEP  members,  and  Eric  Jones,  and  Nancy  Maruzak,  and  we'll 
make  them  into  containment  scientists.  They  will  be  responsible  for 
the  event  from  the  time  I  assign  it  to  them,  and  we  lay  out  the 
parameters  for  it,  with  the  yield  and  the  location.  And  they'll  carry 
it  through  the  presentation,  and  ultimately  the  post-shot  report,  to 
the  Panel."  Brownlee  said,  "Okay,  we'll  try  it,"  and  so  we  did. 

And  that's  where  we  are  today,  except  with  far  fewer  people. 
At  one  time  in  our  glorious  past,  which,  as  I  recall,  was  fiscal  year 
1 984,  the  Containment  Program  had  34  FTE's,  which  represented 
about  42  to  45  actual  personnel.  That  was  pretty  big,  and  it  was 
pretty  much  paralleled  by  our  colleagues  at  Livermore  in  their 
containment  program. 

Brownlee:  When  the  containment  goups  were  large,  and  even 
before,  there  were  a  good  many  opportunities  for  Los  Alamos  and 
Livermore  to  work  together  toward  common  goals.  There  were  also 
many  opportunities  for  disagreements.  At  any  given  time,  both 
kinds  of  activities  were  on-going.  It  was  therefore  possible  to 
believe  that  no  cooperation  ever  occurred,  or  that  good  together¬ 
ness  was  possible,  depending  upon  just  where  one  happened  to  sit. 
I  happened  to  have  one  foot  in  each  activity,  and  remember  a  few 
occasions  when  Los  Alamos  asked  cerftain  questions  that  caused 
some  difficulty  for  Livermore  in  public  meetings,  yet  the  result 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


103 


enhanced  certain  arguments  that  Livermore's  containment  people 
could  not  win  at  home.  So,  some  debates  were  based  on  what  I  will 
call  "a  non-obvious  agenda”. 

House:  A  sidelight  that  I  would  like  to  bring  to  your  attention 
is  the  incredible  acrimony  that  existed  between  Lawrence  Livermore 
guys  and  Los  Alamos  containment  guys  in  the  early,  if  not  almost 
all  the  way  through,  the  seventies.  It  seemed  to  be  initially 
precipitated  by  two  adversaries  across  the  table,  who  shall  remain 
nameless,  who  got  into  a  shouting  match  one  day  at  a  CEP  meeting. 
I  remember  it  as  well  as  if  it  were  last  week.  Those  two  gentlemen 
were  summarily  removed  from  the  Panel  by  the  Chairman.  One  of 
them,  by  his  choice,  no  longer  works  at  Livermore,  and  the  other 
one,  by  his  choice,  is  retired  from  Los  Alamos.  But  for  a  long  time 
there  was  an  incredible  acrimony;  there  was  a  real  bad  -  -  them  guys 
at  Livermore,  and  vice  versa  -  -  attitude. 

Carothers:  I  know  the  two  gentlemen  to  whom  you  refer.  I 
remember  the  situation,  and  I  did  remove  them  from  the  Panel.  I 
must  say  i  had  a  little  difficulty  with  Los  Alamos.  I  talked  to 
Brownlee  first,  and  he  was  understanding  of  my  position.  Then  i  got 
a  call  from  Dr.  Charles  I.  Brown,  who  informed  me  that  the  Los 
Alamos  Scientific  Laboratory  would  decide  who  would  be  their 
representative  on  the  Panel,  and  that  was  not  something  that  was 
within  my  purview.  I  explained  to  Dr.  Brown  that  Los  Alamos  did 
not  have  a  representative  on  the  Panel;  that  was  not  the  way  the 
Panel  was  constituted.  The  Laboratories,  and  other  organizations, 
nominated  people  they  felt  were  reasonably  expert  in  the  field,  and 
subject  to  the  Manager's  approval,  and  mine,  those  people  could 
serve  on  the  Panel.  Anyway,  I  won. 

House:  Yes.  I  noticed  that  you  did,  and  I  have  remembered 
that.  And,  quite  frankly,  the  tension  level  was  reduced  dramatically 
as  a  result  of  that  change  of  personnel.  Anyway,  to  carry  on  with 
this,  and  not  to  beat  a  dead  horse,  it  wasn't  until  Larry  McKague 
became  Livermore's  containment  project  leader,  then  succeeded  by 
Frank  Morrison,  that  we  started  working  together  to  try  to  reduce 
this  tension  and  acrimony.  I  remember  Carl  Smith  sitting  at  the  CEP 
table  one  day  and  commenting  about  the  acrimony  that  apparently 
existed  between  the  two  Labs.  That  caused  me  to  think  about  how 
we  could  defuse  this.  We  were  viewing  the  attitude  of  our 


104 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


containment  colleagues  at  Livermore  as  a  "hassle  LASL"  attitude. 
I  thought  that  was  no  good,  and  that  we  ought  to  do  something  to 
fix  that. 

The  first  real  case  of  a  friendly  gesture  was  when  the  late  Frank 
Morrison  invited  me  out  to  sit  in  on  a  Livermore  pre-CEP  meeting. 
This  was  absolutely  unprecedented  !  Sit  in  on  a  pre-CEP?  That's 
inviting  the  enemy  into  your  camp;  the  fox  into  the  hen  house.  But 
I  went,  and  it  was  great,  although  I  was  a  little  uncomfortable, 
needless  to  say.  Then  after  the  pre-CEP,  that  evening  I  was  invited 
to  Frank's  home,  and  he  had  some  of  the  Livermore  containment 
folks  over  for  dinner.  That  was  what  really  broke  the  ice,  I  think. 
After  Frank's  tragic  demise  I  continued  to  work  with  his  successors, 
up  to  and  including  Norm  Burkhard,  the  current  program  leader. 
We  have,  I  think,  maintained  a  much  better  attitude.  We  don't  hold 
hands,  per  se,  but  we  do  talk  to  each  other,  and  when  the 
Laboratories  independently  review  each  other's  containment  pro¬ 
spectuses  prior  to  presentation  to  the  CEP  we  try  to  air  all  our  dirty 
laundry,  behind  the  scenes  and  before  the  CEP  meeting,  so  we  don't 
get  in  there  and  have  one  of  these  acrimonious  activities. 

Carothers:  Do  you  think  that's  proper? 

House:  The  reviewing  of  each  others  shots?  I  think  that's  a 
very  important  part  of  the  checks  and  balances  that  seems  to  be  built 
into  the  containment  community.  And  of  course  you  must  under¬ 
stand,  it  doesn't  exist  just  between  the  two  Laboratories.  We  get 
comments  from  the  USGS,  whose  primary  focus  is  on  the  site 
characterization  package.  When  Russ  Duff,  of  S-Cubed,  was  on  the 
Panel,  he  would  call  me  up  with  a  concern,  and  we  would  discuss  it. 
Sometimes  it  was  a  simple  question  that  needed  explaining,  and 
perhaps  Russ  didn't  feel  he  might  want  to  raise  it  in  the  forum  of  the 
CEP,  but  he  really  wanted  an  answer.  As  far  as  the  two  Laboratories 
looking  over  each  others  shoulders,  and  as  one  wag  has  been  known 
to  say,  "keeping  each  other  honest,"  I  think  it's  a  very  important 
part  of  the  way  we  do  business. 

There  have  been  occasions  when  either  Lab  has  served  notice 
on  the  other  one's  event,  via  the  prospectus  mode  and  response. 
"Maybe  you  guys  ought  to  look  at  this,"  or  "Have  you  really 
calculated  that,  and  do  you  really  believe  those  numbers?"  So  I 
think  it's  incredibly  important,  and  it's  been  something  we've 
continued.  The  way  it  works  is  quite  simple.  We  transmit  the 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


105 


prospectus  to  the  containment  community,  and  of  course  the  other 
Laboratory  is  included,  and  we  expect  a  response  within  a  week  or 
two.  It  usually  comes  as  a  FAX,  and  is  prepared  by  one  of  the 
principal  containment  members  of  the  organization.  In  many  cases 
it's  the  CEP  member,  like  Cliff  Olsen  at  Livermore,  or  Tom  Kunkle 
at  Los  Alamos.  And  there  will  be  questions  and  comments  on  the 
event.  And  then  we  interact,  and  it's  most  helpful. 

Carothers:  Then  why  do  you  need  a  CEP?  And  I  do  not  mean 
that  as  a  frivolous  question. 

House:  No,  I  don't  take  it  as  such.  Why  do  we  need  a  CEP? 
The  Panel  represents  a  rather  broad  scientific  experience  base. 
Hydrologists,  geologists,  radiochemists,  people  who  are  well  versed 
and  have  expertise  in  the  calculationa!  side  of  the  house,  and  people 
we  might  refer  to  as  phenomenologists.  These  folks  are  looking  at 
the  sponsoring  Laboratory's  containment  plan  from,  hopefully,  an 
independent  viewpoint.  So  you  have  nine  or  ten  individuals 
reviewing  and  discussing  and  questioning  the  plan  of  the  sponsoring 
Laboratory.  It  provides  a  review  that  is,  in  my  experience, 
unparalleled  for  plans  of  operations  that  are  going  to  go  forward, 
especially  with  something  as  critical  as  an  underground  nuclear  test. 

The  Containment  Panel  review  has  a  distinct  ESfitH  aspect  to 
it.  Back  in  the  days  before  Admiral  Watkins  we  didn't  call  it  ESscH, 
but  it  certainly  is  environment,  safety,  and  health  oriented,  and  it's 
a  big  part  of  the  whole  thing.  There  have  been  occasions  when  the 
sponsoring  Laboratory  had  an  event  reviewed  by  the  Containment 
Evaluation  Panel,  and  has  had  to  step  back  and  say,  "Well,  maybe 
we  didn't  do  this  quite  right.  Maybe  that  hole  isn't  suitable  for  that 
event."  And  so,  appropriate  steps  and  responses  are  taken.  Once 
again  checks  and  balances  are  in  play. 

Carothers:  There  are  some  people  who  feel  that  the  process 
has  gotten  to  be  pretty  cut  and  dried,  and  that  it  has  become  a  kind 
of  ritualistic  process  that  you  have  to  go  through.  And  that  the  CEP 
doesn't  really  do  much,  other  than  providing  a  public  facade  of 
reviewing  the  Laboratories'  and  DNA's  activities. 

House:  I  think  you  would  find,  if  you  ask  any  seasoned  member 
of  the  containment  staff  at  either  Los  Alamos  or  Livermore,  or  at 
the  DNA,  they  would  strenuously  object  to  that.  To  some  it  may 
seem  like  a  rote  process,  where  you  go  to  the  Panel,  and  you  stand 


1 06  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

up  and  you  present  the  standard  set  of  viewgraphs,  and  you  make 
the  standard  apple  pie  and  Chevrolet  arguments.  But  the  fact 
remains  that  you  are  having  your  containment  plan  reviewed  by,  not 
a  peer  group,  but  a  group  of  experts  in  the  field  of  underground 
testing.  While  it  may  seem  like  the  same  old  stuff,  every  time  we 
go  to  a  Containment  Evaluation  Panel  presentation,  granted  it  is 
repetitive,  you  will  find  that  each  containment  scientist  is  extremely 
sensitized  and  concerned  about  the  design  they  have  put  together. 
And  not  just  to  get  it  approved. 

Carothers:  When  a  person  does  a  presentation,  in  front  of 
friends  and  peers  from  his  or  her  own  Laboratory,  and  people  from 
a  couple  of  other,  may  I  say  possibly  competing  organizations,  and 
from  various  other  places,  there  are  going  to  be  questions  about 
various  aspects  of  the  plan.  Basically  that  person  doesn't  want  to 
look  stupid.  I  wouldn't  want  to  stand  up  there  and  make  a  fool  of 
myself. 

House:  I  know  what  you  mean.  I've  been  there,  Jim.  But 
consider  this.  Both  Laboratory  containment  staffs  have  what  we  call 
pre-CEP  meetings.  Or  you  could  refer  to  them  as  dry  runs  for  the 
presentation.  The  way  we  like  to  view  it  is  that  it's  a  heck  of  a  lot 
easier  to  take  flak  here  at  home,  from  your  peer  group,  and  be 
prepared,  and  be  able  to  answer  the  majority  of  questions  that 
presumably  might  be  posed  to  you,  versus  doing  it  in  front  of  the 
Panel.  I  likened  the  CEP  presentation,  to  Brownlee,  and  mind  you 
this  was  back  when  I  was  doing  them  all,  in  many  cases  one  a  month, 
especially  during  the  high  yield  test  series  in  '76,  to  be  like 
defending  your  doctoral  thesis  once  a  month. 

It's  a  pretty  stressful  situation,  and  sure  you  don't  want  to  look 
bad,  and  sure  you'd  like  to  get  your  event  properly  categorized  and 
approved.  But  by  golly,  when  push  comes  to  shove  and  the  Panel, 
as  a  whole,  or  as  a  individual  Panel  member,  finds  something  that 
is  unsuitable,  whether  it  isn't  understood,  or  what  have  you,  we 
better  to  step  back  and  take  another  look  rather  than  try  to  move 
forward  with  something  that  might  cause  a  problem  at  shot  time. 

And,  you  don't  want  to  present  something  that  might  not  make 
it  through  the  detonation  authority  process.  I  can  remember  one 
time  when  the  Chairman's  recommendation  to  the  Manager,  and 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


107 


the  Manager's  subsequent  forwarding  of  the  detonation  authority 
package  back  to  Germantown  didn't  guarantee  the  event  was  going 
to  get  approved  by  Headquarters. 

Carothers:  It  has  happened  once  only  that  the  DOE  Headquar¬ 
ters  has  refused  the  Manager's  request  for  detonation  authority. 
That  was  for  the  Kawich  event,  and  I  consider  that  to  have  been  an 
embarrassing  failure  on  my  part.  I  went  to  the  Manager  and 
apologized  for  having  put  him  in  that  situation. 

House:  Well,  it  is  an  awful  feeling,  and  as  I  said,  I  have  been 
there,  to  stand  up  in  front  of  the  Panel  and  get  put  on  the  run.  Once 
I  got  a  post-presentation  viewgraph  from  my  Livermore  colleagues 
about  the  "wounded  rabbit"  syndrome.  Or,  to  have  an  event  come 
up  to  categorization  and  have  someone  on  the  Panel  give  it  a 
dissenting  vote.  It  stops  everything  dead  in  the  water. 

The  DNA  took  a  different  route  than  the  Laboratories  in 
approaching  the  problem  of  containment.  They  were  doing  both 
vertical  and  horizontal  line-of-sight  shots,  with  limited  success  in 
containing  the  radioactive  products  of  the  detonation.  And,  like  the 
Laboratories,  they  were  losing  experimental  data.  Joe  LaComb, 
DNA,  had  much  of  the  responsibility  for  the  way  the  events  were 
designed  and  constructed,  but  he  had  no  person  designated  as 
responsible  for  containment. 

LaComb:  By  1 966  we  cared  about  containment,  and  I  cared 
about  it,  because  it  was  the  same  as  it  is  today.  If  we  don't  keep  all 
the  detonation  products  in  close  we  don't  accomplish  what  we  want 
to  accomplish.  We  lose  our  experiments.  On  Double  Play,  which 
was  in  ]une  of  '66,  after  we  had  problems  with  Red  Hot  in  March, 
Discus  Thrower  in  May,  and  Pile  Driver  in  June,  Jack  Noyer  came 
out  and  said,  "How  long  will  it  take  you  to  build  an  overburden 
plug?"  So,  we  built  an  overburden  plug  in  five  days.  We  put  that 
plug  in  because  our  containment  record  wasn't  very  good.  We 
already  had  a  gas-seal  door  in  the  drift,  so  when  we  ended  up  we  had, 
in  general,  the  same  kind  of  configuration  we  do  nowadays,  al¬ 
though  we  didn't  have  a  lot  of  the  things  we  do  now,  like  cable  gas 
blocks.  That  plug  was  strictly  for  public  safety  and  health.  It  wasn't 
going  to  help  our  experiments  at  all. 


1 08  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

I  don't  think  at  that  time  DASA  had  anybody  who  was 
designated  as  the  person  to  be  concerned  about  containment. 
There  wasn't  really  anyone  who  was  given  that  responsibility,  other 
than  Jack  Noyer.  Being  the  kind  of  person  he  was,  he  tried  to  worry 
about  it  all.  A  person  I  listened  to  was  Wendell  Weart,  from  Sandia. 
He  was  the  one  who  came  out  when  we  had  questions  regarding  how 
should  the  stemming  be  placed,  should  the  hook  drift  be  left  open 
or  should  it  be  backfilled  -  -  those  kinds  of  things.  Mel  Merritt  was 
another  one  who  helped. 

It  was  about  that  time  that  they  started  doing  calculations  with 
a  bunch  of  folks  who  were  with  General  Atomics.  It  started  out  with 
some  GA  folks  involved,  and  there  was,  right  after  Double  Play, 
some  RAND  people  involved.  For  Door  Mist,  in  '67,  it  was  those 
contractors  who  were  doing  the  calculations,  and  were  saying  we 
want  this  kind  of  grout  with  this  kind  of  strength,  and  so  forth.  As 
far  as  the  overburden  plug  and  the  gas-seal  door  went,  that  was  more 
or  less  our  engineering  problem.  There  were  no  real  criteria. 

So,  there  wasn't  anybody  in  DASA,  in  the  Door  Mist  time 
frame,  in  1 967,  saying  it  was  this  or  that,  that  DASA  wanted.  The 
contractors  were  saying,  and  saying  more  or  less  directly  to  myself 
and  the  Test  Group  Director,  "This  is  what  DASA  wants."  Some¬ 
body  said  they  wanted  a  plug,  or  particular  kinds  of  grout,  but  it 
wasn't  my  job  to  define  those  things,  only  from  the  standpoint  that 
I  tried  to  make  sure  we  got  the  materials  that  the  "experts"  thought 
they  wanted. 

Right  after  Door  Mist,  where  we  had  more  problems,  Noyer 
told  me,  "That  won't  happen  again.  You're  going  to  take  care  of 
this."  I  said,  "Yes  sir."  We  could  see  we  were  going  to  have  to  pay 
some  significant  attention  to  protecting  the  experiments,  and  to 
stopping  leaks.  So,  after  Door  Mist,  for  every  test  I  sat  down,  and 
I  wrote  out  the  criteria  for  the  grouts;  what  the  velocity  should  be, 
the  strength  should  be  at  least  this,  and  so  on.  And  I  set  down 
criteria  as  to  how  things  were  going  to  be  done,  and  what  should  be 
done.  I  worked  fairly  closely  with  the  people  doing  the  calculations, 
although  I  didn't  understand  what  they  were  doing,  at  that  time. 

It  was,  in  our  program,  always  a  constant  threat  that  the  people 
funding  the  experiments  would  decide  that  the  possibility  that  they 
would  lose  a  lot  of  their  data  was  too  big  to  take  a  chance  on.  That's 
one  of  the  reasons  DASA  tried  to  turn  things  around  so  rapidly  after 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


109 


the  four  in  a  row  in  '66.  I  don't  think  it  was  so  much  a  big  concern 
about  the  fact  that  we  were  releasing  a  little  radiation  to  the 
atmosphere.  It  was  the  loss  of  the  experiments,  and  our  credibility. 
I  think  that  has  always  been  a  factor,  and  still  is. 

About  that  time  we  formed  what  we  called  the  Stemming  And 
Containment  Panel  Junior,  or  SACPAN  Junior,  which  was  a  working 
group.  It  was  a  real  mixture.  There  was  Court  McFarland  from 
headquarters  DNA,  who  was  an  aeronautical  engineer,  but  very 
interested  in  materials  behavior.  There  was  Ben  Grody,  who  had  a 
doctor's  degree  in  geology,  and  Bob  Bjork,  who  was,  and  is,  an 
excellent  physicist,  myself,  and  Jerry  Kent.  That  group,  in  my 
opinion,  really  turned  our  containment  program  around.  I  think 
that  group  was  the  real  foundation  of  the  DNA  containment 
program. 

When  Baneberry  happened  we  were  working  on  Misty  North. 
We  were  also  getting  ready  to  field  Diagonal  Line.  We  had  to  go  and 
present  a  risk-benefit  analysis  for  the  Diagonal  Line  shot  to  get 
permission  to  fire  it,  because  some  guy  named  Jim  Carothers,  on  the 
Panel,  said  it  was  going  to  leak.  Actually  that  turned  out  to  be  good, 
because  it  did  leak,  and  we  had  gone  through  it,  and  they  had  okayed 
it  with  that  possibility  in  mind.  So,  they  weren't  surprised.  We  also 
had  to  do  that  for  Misty  North,  because  there  wasn't  a  whole  lot  of 
confidence.  Fortunately,  that  one  contained. 

We  also  had  the  presentations  we  had  to  make  to  the  CEP,  and 
there  were  problems  with  some  of  the  early  shots  when  we  presented 
our  material,  in  getting  our  ideas  across  about  what  we  were  trying 
to  do.  I  was  talking  to  Carl  Keller  one  day,  and  we  were  kicking  ideas 
about  this  problem  back  and  forth.  Hesaid  something  about  vessels, 
and  I  said,  "You  know,  it  might  be  worth  thinking  about  that."  So, 
it  was  when  he  and  I  were  talking  that  the  seed  was  planted,  I  think. 
I  decided  there  had  to  be  a  logical  way  to  present  this  material,  so 
you  could  say,  "That  will  be  coming  in  this  section  here."  So,  I  sat 
down  and  I  said,  "Okay,  we've  got  three  vessels,  nested  together, 
and  each  one  backing  up  the  ones  inside  it."  So,  I  started  writing 
up  the  presentation  based  on  the  three  vessel  concept.  I  made  out 
the  outlines,  and  then  went  back  and  started  writing  how  you  would 
do  it.  They're  still  using  some  of  the  same  words  today. 


110  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

In  '74  DNA  hired  Carl  Keller  to  be  the  Containment  Scientist, 
and  early  on  he  began  to  develop  an  experimental  and  calculationai 
program  to  try  to  understand  some  things  about  what  was  going  on. 
Through  the  years,  thirty  to  forty  percent  of  our  effort  with  Pac 
Tech  and  S-Cubed  has  been  in  research,  to  do  something  new  and 
different,  to  find  out  something.  We've  got  to  do  our  production 
work  that's  associated  with  the  test,  but  it's  essential  to  me  that  we 
still  keep  enough  effort  in  there  to  try  to  find  out  if  there  isn't 
something  there,  something  we're  missing.  I  always  have  the  feeling 
there's  a  shadow  lurking  around  the  corner. 

Keller:  When  I  came  to  DNA  I  think  the  title  of  the  position  was 
Containment  Scientist,  and  there  was  a  job  description  associated 
with  that,  as  the  Civil  Service  requires.  That  job  description  had 
been  developed  by  Jay  Davis,  my  predecessor  at  DNA  by  more  than 
a  year,  and  by  the  Director  of  the  Test  Directorate.  This  was  a  new 
job  description,  with  their  new  concept  of  what  the  Containment 
Scientist  ought  to  be  doing. 

At  that  time  DNA  had  numerous  problems,  and  they  had 
decided  that  they  needed  a  heavier  gun  in  the  Containment  Scientist 
position.  They  upgraded  the  position  from  a  GS-14  to  a  GS-15, 
which  meant  they  could  offer  more  pay.  I  know  that  they  had 
solicited  several  senior  people  in  the  containment  business  to  take 
that  job  -  -  people  far  more  senior  than  I  was.  Those  people,  I 
suspect,  were  already  above  that  pay  grade,  and  probably  well 
established  in  the  Laboratories.  I  wouldn't  say  I  was  the  bottom  of 
the  barrel,  but  I  was  certainly  not  their  first  choice  for  the  position. 

It  was  an  interesting  environment  at  DNA.  They  hadn't  had 
any  recent  leaks,  but  they  had  had  some  real  encounters  with  the 
Containment  Evaluation  Panel.  I  remember  one  of  their  presenta¬ 
tions  to  the  Panel  where  they  had  decided  not  to  present  any  of  the 
mechanical  closures,  because  they  felt  those  were  only  relevant  to 
sample  protection.  Therefore,  the  DNA  people  who  were  present¬ 
ing  the  event  refused  to  present  any  details  about  the  closures, 
because  that  was  irrelevant  to  containment.  Well,  the  Panel  refused 
to  categorize  the  shot,  because  they  thought  the  closures  were 
relevant  to  containment.  Then  Phil  Opedahl,  who  was  the  Test 
Group  Director  on  that  event  -  - 1  believe  it  was  Husky  Ace  -  -  stood 
up  and  said,  "Just  a  minute.  Mr.  Chairman,  could  we  have  a  short 
recess?" 


The  Beginnings  of  Containment  Programs 


After  the  recess  it  was,  "We'II  provide  you  with  any  of  the 
information  you  want."  It  was  pretty  clear  where  the  concept  that 
the  mechanical  closures  were  not  containment  features  came  from, 
because  for  many  years  thereafter  ]oe  LaComb  still  insisted  that  the 
MAC'S  were  not  containment  features.  I  never  agreed  with  him  on 
that  point,  and  so  we  always  described  them  fully  in  the  CEP 
documents. 

One  of  the  concerns  was  that  it  handicapped  the  Test  Director 
to  have  all  these  non-containment  features  included  in  the 
containment  presentation.  But  it  was  decided  by  the  Panel  that 
those  features  were  important  to  containment.  And  the  Panel  was 
right.  You  can  say  with  confidence  that  after  Mighty  Oak  those 
features  were  thought  to  be  very  important.  So,  that's  an  old 
concept  that's  been  abandoned,  but  I  don't  think  DNA  totally 
abandoned  it  until  a  couple  of  years  ago. 

When  I  came  to  DNA  their  containment  program  was  really 
being  managed  by  S-Cubed.  There  was  no  Containment  Scientist, 
and  had  not  been  one  for  over  a  year.  DNA  was  doing  as  well  as  they 
could  with  the  few  military  people  they  had,  some  of  whom  were 
quite  new  to  the  business.  I  wouldn't  say  they  were  desperate,  but 
they  were  really  being  controlled  by  the  contractors.  DNA  had  very 
little  in  the  way  of  technical  capability  in-house,  so  they  really  relied 
almost  completely  on  their  contractors,  and  S-Cubed  was  happy  to 
step  in  and  supply  all  the  advice  the  DNA  needed. 

For  me  it  was  a  totally  new  environment,  dealing  with  contrac¬ 
tors,  because  when  I  was  at  Los  Alamos  contractors  were  considered 
second-class  citizens;  rude,  mercenary,  science-for-hire  kind  of 
people.  They  are  still  mentioned  with  a  sneer.  It  was  at  DNA  that 
I  discovered  that  contractors  did  offer  far  more  than  you'd  ever 
believe  from  the  way  they  were  considered  at  Los  Alamos.  I  found 
they  really  were  responsive,  partly  because  you  controlled  the  purse 
strings,  but  also  because  they  were  very  capable.  My  whole  staff  was 
essentially  contractors,  and  over  the  next  ten  years  I  gained  a  great 
deal  of  respect  for  them. 

The  whole  concept  of  contracting  for  support  does  isolate  you 
a  bit  from  your  staff,  but  you  do  define  what  the  deliverable  is  to 
be,  and  what  the  price  will  be,  and  what  the  schedule  will  be.  I  found 
that  I  got  results  from  the  contractors  much  more  predictably  than, 
say,  a  program  manager  at  Los  Alamos  would  get  from  his  staff. 


112 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


That's  because  his  staff  might  be  scattered  ail  over  the  Laboratory, 
and  he  was  always  competing  with  other  programs  in  the  Laboratory 
for  the  attention  of  those  people  he  needed. 

I  found  I  very  much  enjoyed  the  contracting  process  as  a  way 
of  doing  a  program.  It  really  worked,  and  we  got  a  lot  of  good 
results,  though  I  was  always  worried  when  the  contractors  agreed 
with  me.  Was  it  because  I  had  control  of  the  money,  or  was  it 
because  they  thought  I  was  correct?  And  I  was  never  sure. 


113 


5 


The  Nevada  Test  Site 

During  1948  and  1949  a  committee  headed  by  Lt.  Gen.  E.  R. 
Quesada  developed  a  list  of  five  potential  sites  that  might  be  used 
for  continental  nuclear  tests.  The  candidates  were  the  White  Sands 
Proving  Grounds  in  New  Mexico,  Pimlico  Sound  in  North  Carolina, 
Dugway-Wendover  Proving  Grounds  in  Utah,  an  area  between 
Fallon  and  Tonopah  in  central  Nevada,  and  the  Las  Vegas-Tonopah 
Gunnery  Range  in  Nevada.  In  1 950,  after  the  approval  by  President 
Truman  of  continental  testing,  some  1360  square  miles  of  the 
Gunnery  Range  were  turned  over  to  the  AEC  for  the  conduct  of 
nuclear  tests.  The  Nevada  Proving  Grounds,  now  kown  as  the 
Nevada  Test  Site,  currently  has  an  area  slightly  larger  than  the  state 
of  Rhode  Island,  and  lies  some  70  miles  northwest  of  Las  Vegas. 

There  are  various  criteria  which  could  be  used  in  the  selection 
of  an  area  to  be  used  for  nuclear  testing,  the  importance  of  each  of 
which  would  depend  on  the  judgment  of  the  person  or  persons 
making  the  selection.  Remoteness  from  populated  areas,  availabil¬ 
ity  of  air,  rail,  and  highway  transport,  security,  and  so  on  are 
important  criteria.  Another  thing  that  would  be  of  importance  is  the 
type  of  nuclear  tests  to  be  conducted,  or  which  might  be  conducted, 
although  that  did  not  appear  to  be  a  factor  in  either  the  selection  of 
the  Pacific  Proving  Ground,  or  the  Nevada  Proving  Grounds. 
Enewetak  and  Bikini,  for  instance,  were  too  small  to  do  experiments 
to  explore  the  effects  of  the  detonations  on  structures  or  military 
hardware,  Crossroads  notwithstanding.  The  possibility  of  under¬ 
ground  detonations  was  not  considered  when  the  selection  of  the 
Nevada  Proving  Grounds  was  made. 

What  would  be  the  geologic  characteristics  of  a  suitable  site, 
where  underground  detonations  were  to  occur,  and  the  radioactive 
products  were  to  be  contained? 

Brownlee:  I'm  of  the  opinion  that  we  have  not  actually  had  to 
address  that  problem,  thanks  to  the  fact  that  we  are  where  we  are. 
In  other  words,  we  were  blessed,  in  a  sense,  by  being  put  down  in 
a  place  not  of  our  choosing;  the  Nevada  Test  Site.  We  have  made 
the  best  of  that  without  having  the  freedom  of  choosing  where  in  the 
world  we'd  like  to  go  to  do  the  best  underground  testing. 


1 1 4  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


As  we've  understood  from  the  Soviets,  and  from  the  French, 
and  from  anybody  else  who's  tried  to  test,  we've  had  a  wealth  of 
different  sites  and  different  media,  with  opportunities  for  different 
kinds  of  tests.  If  we  want  to  test  in  granite,  we  can;  we  don't  have 
to  go  to  North  Africa.  If  we  want  to  test  below  the  water  table,  we 
can.  If  we  want  to  test  above  the  water  table,  we  can.  We  can  test 
in  various  kinds  of  alluvium,  and  in  various  kinds  of  tuff.  Most  places 
in  the  world  are  not  blessed  with  all  of  those  opportunities.  So, 
without  having  had  any  opportunity  to  select  the  site,  we  have  been 
lucky,  if  lucky  is  the  right  word,  in  being  able  to  find  a  great  variety 
of  media  within  the  confines  of  the  Test  Site. 

Carothers:  Do  you  mean  that  if  in  the  fifties  someone  had  said, 
"We  want  you  to  test  underground.  And,  not  one  atom  out.  Pick 
a  good  spot,  in  the  United  States,  and  you  can  have  it,"  we  probably 
wouldn't  have  picked  a  place  as  good  as  the  Test  Site? 

Brownlee:  Absolutely.  If  we  had  used  our  heads  we  would 
have  been  in  terrible  trouble.  We  were  very  slow  to  learn  all  of  the 
different  opportunities  we  had  for  the  different  kinds  of  tests  that 
we  wanted  to  do.  For  example,  did  we  want  to  mine  a  big  room? 
At  the  Test  Site  we  could.  Did  we  want  to  do  something  and  throw 
a  little  dirt  on  it?  We  could.  Did  we  want  to  lay  something  out  on 
the  surface  and  shoot  it?  We  could.  We  could  do  that  because  in 
those  very  early  years  we  were  sufficiently  removed  from  anybody 
that  we  essentially  had  everything  around  us,  and  a  long  way  around 
us,  under  our  control,  with  a  few  exceptions. 

When  we  went  underground  the  number  of  milk  cows  in  the 
fallout  pattern  we  might  have  would  sometimes  be  three,  or  six.  The 
number  of  people  for  whom  you  would  have  to  provide  the  means 
of  evacuation,  were  that  to  be  needed,  would  be  twelve,  or  twenty. 
What's  happened  with  the  Test  Site  since  those  days  is  that  people 
have  moved  right  to  the  boundaries  of  the  Test  Site,  and  there  are 
literally  hundreds  and  thousands  of  everything  and  anything.  But 
people  see  the  Test  Site  as  it  is,  and  they  don't  understand  that  it 
was  selected  as  it  was. 

Early,  it  seems  to  me,  we  had  an  emplacement  hole  and  we  used 
it.  Even  after  Baneberry  we  still  used  the  hole  that  was  there.  We 
had  them  stockpiled,  and  we  tended  to  use  them.  It  took  us  quite 
a  little  while  after  Baneberry  before  we  really  selected  a  site  we 
wanted  for  the  shot.  I  think  it's  only  in  relatively  recent  times  that 


The  Nevada  Test  Site 


115 


the  containment  people  have  had  some  input,  really,  as  to  which 
hole  they  wanted  for  a  given  shot.  There  are  times  when  we  will 
have  a  deep  hole,  and  shoot  near  the  top  of  it.  That  deep  hole  was 
drilled  for  something  else,  but  we  make  use  of  it.  I  can  find  all  kinds 
of  examples,  still,  where  we  don't  select  the  site  as  logically  as  we 
are  able.  We  do  things  in  tuff  that  might  better  be  done  in  alluvium, 
and  so  forth. 

There  is  one  other  thing,  and  that's  the  water  flow.  1  think  it's 
bad  business  to  get  plutonium  into  an  aquifer.  It  happens  that  at  the 
Test  Site  the  water  doesn't  go  anywhere.  To  the  first  approxima¬ 
tion,  it  just  sits  there.  AI  Graves  didn't  know  that  either,  when  he 
selected  the  Test  Site.  And  so  from  a  radiological  point  of  view,  a 
hydrologic  point  of  view,  the  Nevada  Test  Site  is  peculiarly  able  to 
support  testing. 

On  the  other  hand,  on  two  or  three  occasions  we've  found 
debris  from  shots  at  places  that  we  had  no  expectation  of  it  being. 
That  tells  me  it's  entirely  possible  that  things  are  going  on  down 
there  for  which  we  have  only  had  an  occasional  whiff.  And  that  we 
are  not  anything  like  as  knowledgeable  about  the  water  flow  as  we 
think  we  are. 

Carothers:  I  have  talked  with  the  folks  who  calculate  what 
might  occur  in  different  types  of  rocks,  if  you  were  to  shoot  in  them. 
They  don't  like  very  hard  rocks  like  granite  because  of  the  tensile 
cracks  that  show  in  the  calculations.  And  they  don't  like  very  weak 
rocks  because  they  don't  sustain  the  residual  stress  fields  thought  to 
be  important  for  containment.  Something  like  tuff  or  alluvium  turns 
out  to  be  just  about  the  best  you  can  do.  Isn't  that  surprising? 
Believe  the  calculations  or  not,  they  imply  that  if  we  were  in  some 
other  site  it  probably  wouldn't  be  nearly  as  good. 

Brownlee:  We  couldn't  have  possibly  done  as  well,  because  I 
don't  think  there's  any  other  place  that  could  be  as  good.  Now, 
that's  said  out  of  ignorance  too,  but  let's  look  at  Pahrump,  which 
was  actually  considered.  The  whole  history  of  the  world  would  have 
been  different.  The  water  table  there  is  so  high  that  all  of  our  testing 
would  have  been  different,  and  we  would  probably  have  had  the 
Russian  experience  of  having  something  come  out  from  each  test. 
Or  we'd  have  spent  so  much  money  that  we  couldn't  have  afforded 
it.  I  bet  you  anything  that  if  we  had  started  out  testing  in  Pahrump 
either  we  would  have  abandoned  it,  or  we  would  have  still  been 


1 1 6  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

there  and,  for  example,  we  would  never  have  had  room  for  the 
British.  Ail  kinds  of  things  would  have  been  different,  it's  really 
true,  I  think,  that  the  selection  of  the  Test  Site  actually  was  a 
branching  point  in  history.  We  took  that  new  road  without  ever 
knowing  why  or  what  we  were  doing,  but  I  feel  it  was  a  very 
fundamental  action. 

As  an  aside,  we  are  in  the  process  of  losing  the  Test  Site  for 
underground  testing,  and  no  one  seems  to  know  or  care.  The 
majority  of  the  NVO  budget  is  now  devoted  to  things  other  than 
underground  testing.  And  their  interests  are  in  Waste  Management 
and  various  other  kinds  of  things.  They  don't  mind  bringing  in  all 
kinds  of  people,  and  building  new  things,  and  doing  new  experi¬ 
ments.  They  would  sell  off  any  part  of  the  Test  Site  to  keep  NVO 
green,  and  they  have  so  cluttered  up  the  Test  Site  with  other  kinds 
of  activities,  which  are  now  sacred,  that  it's  increasingly  difficult  to 
get  a  shot  off. 

And  you  haven't  seen  anything  yet.  I  actually  challenged  one 
of  the  Assistant  Managers  at  NVO  a  few  months  ago,  and  said,  "I 
believe  the  biggest  threat  that  we  have  to  the  Test  Site  is  NVO.  It's 
not  the  people  on  the  borders.  It's  not  Las  Vegas.  It's  not  the  anti's. 
It's  ourselves.  We're  our  biggest  enemies."  I  didn't  know  whether 
I  could  get  away  with  saying  that,  but  he  pondered  it  a  while  and 
said,  "I  see  what  you  mean,  and  I  believe  you're  right.  We  really 
have  plans  for  doing  all  kinds  of  things."  They're  preparing  for  a 
moratorium,  and  so  they're  going  to  do  all  kinds  of  things. 

They  imported  a  lot  of  activities  during  the  last  moratorium. 
And  when  we  go  into  another  test  moratorium,  which  I  figure  will 
come  one  of  these  days,  I  don't  believe  we'll  ever  go  back  to  being 
able  to  use  the  Test  Site  again.  I've  said  what  I  think  are  the 
characteristics  of  the  Site  that  are  to  our  advantage,  and  I  believe 
that  there  is  hardly  anybody  in  NVO  who  understands  them.  They 
do  not  appreciate  what  they  have.  They  do  not  appreciate  what  it 
means  to  have  such  a  place. 

I  believe  that  as  long  as  there's  a  nuclear  stockpile  we  have  to 
have  the  ability  to  address  questions  which  may  arise.  That  might 
be  continued  testing,  or  it  might  not.  It  might  mean  a  nuclear  test, 
or  it  might  not.  I'm  talking  about  questions  which  may  arise,  and 
we  have  to  have  a  place  where  we  can  go  to  answer  them. 
Nowadays,  I  visualize  that  being  underground.  Even  chemical 


The  Nevada  Test  Site 


117 


experiments  could  be  underground,  and  not  on  the  surface.  We 
need  a  variety  of  ways  to  be  ready  to  answer  a  variety  of  questions. 
So,  we  need  alluvium,  and  granite,  and  tuff,  and  shale,  and  dry,  and 
wet,  and  space,  and  mesas,  and  valleys.  We  need  it  all,  because  we 
do  not  know  which  part  of  it  we  can  give  up.  I  believe  we  will  have 
a  nuclear  stockpile  for  at  least  the  next  four  decades.  Forty  years. 
I  can't  conceive  of  getting  rid  of  it  in  less  than  forty  years  time.  I 
would  like  to  think  we  can,  but  I  can't  believe  that  we'll  be  able  to 
do  that. 

If  you  look  at  what's  happened  at  NTS  in  the  last  forty  years, 
it's  an  exponential  curve.  And  if  we  have  any  kind  of  a  moratorium 
it  will  get  worse.  With  Baneberry  we  stopped  testing,  and  at  the  end 
of  six  months,  every  week  we  delayed  it  was  harder  to  start.  We 
almost  didn't  get  started  up  again;  it  got  harder  and  harder  as  time 
went  on.  I  think  that  if  there  is  any  kind  of  a  moratorium,  it  will  be 
that  way  again.  And  so,  I  almost  despair  over  the  loss  of  our  Test 
Site,  because  I  think  it's  happening,  and  NVO  couldn't  care  less 
because  they  have  no  appreciation  of  what  I've  been  trying  to  say. 

I  shouldn't  say,  "no  appreciation"  because  I've  been  lecturing 
to  them,  and  waving  my  arms  at  them,  and  writing  things  down  and 
showing  it  to  them.  But  it  doesn't  take.  After  all,  we  don't  have 
to  pay  any  attention  to  what  Brownlee's  saying.  We've  got  this 
waste  management  program,  and  the  President  has  said.  Secretary 
Watkins  has  said,  "We've  got  to  clean  up.  That's  the  urgent  thing." 
So,  NVO  is  no  longer  interested  in  stockpiles  and  testing;  that's  just 
way  down  on  the  list.  You  noticed  in  the  memo  we  got  from 
Watkins,  where  he  outlined  all  the  things  DOE  did,  that  he  never 
once  mentioned  nuclear  tests  at  all?  It's  not  listed  in  his  long  list  of 
things  that  had  to  be  looked  at.  Nuclear  test  is  not  mentioned.  So, 
the  DOE  has  little  appreciation  of  what  I'm  saying. 

And  what's  worse,  neither  do  the  Laboratories.  This  question 
that  you've  asked  me  about  the  Test  Site  I  think  is  an  exceedingly 
important  question.  We  ought  to  recognize  what  the  Site  means  to 
us,  and  I  think  we  don't.  Notice  that  I've  said,  "Despite  all  the 
opportunities  we've  had  to  use  it  cleverly,  we  haven't."  And  now 
I'm  saying,  "Even  though  we've  learned  as  much  as  we  have,  we're 
getting  ready  to  throw  it  away." 


1 1 8  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

That's  the  reason  why  I  spent  quite  a  few  months  writing  a 
document  on  the  preservation  of  the  Test  Site.  And  I  got  Troy 
Wade  to  finally  enunciate  the  DOE  policy  on  the  preservation  of  the 
Test  Site,  which  in  effect  says  to  N  VO  and  ALOO  that  any  decision 
made  about  the  day-to-day  operation  of  the  T est  Site  has  to  be  made 
with  the  idea  that  we're  going  to  preserve  it  for  testing.  I  was  hoping 
by  that  means  to  get  something  down  on  paper  which  then  I  could 
wave  in  NVO's  face,  saying,  "When  you  bring  in  these  rug  mer¬ 
chants,  that  is  contrary  to  the  policy  of  the  preservation  of  the  Test 
Site." 

But  doggone  it,  there  is  something  kind  of  sacred  about  the 
Test  Site  nowadays.  Put  away  the  conservationists,  and  the  preser¬ 
vationists,  and  the  purists.  We  have  done  some  things  there  that  are 
special  in  history.  They  are.  In  the  history  of  the  world,  a  thousand 
years  from  now,  that's  going  to  be  something  kind  of  special.  We 
ought  to  have  that  in  mind  as  we  act,  but  our  concern  is  only  this 
year's  budget.  That's  all.  And  we  ought  to  be  bigger  than  that;  we 
ought  to  be  thinking  more  broadly  than  that.  I'm  saying,  "Here  we 
have  the  Test  Site.  We  could  use  it  much  more  cleverly  than  we  do, 
but  we're  only  interested  in  the  current  budget  with  this  fiscal  year's 
shots.  That's  our  only  concern,  and  therefore,  we  just  do  things  as 
they  come."  1  think  that's  a  grave  mistake.  I  doubt  that  we  will  ever 
do  it  any  other  way  because  that's  the  way  our  government  is,  and 
that's  the  way  we  are.  But  I  wish  it  were  otherwise,  and  I  would  like 
to  really  understand  more  about  containment  by  doing  things  of 
various  kinds  at  the  Test  Site. 

Another  point  I  want  to  make.  I  only  learned  in  recent  years 
that  when  it  comes  to  space  you  don't  need  a  nuclear  test  to  affect 

it.  You  can  seriously  affect  space  with  just  a  little  bit  of  energy.  If 
you  have  what  the  United  States  government  assumes  is  empty 
space,  a  vacuum,  it  doesn't  take  very  much  mass  there  to  change  it. 
Actually,  the  United  States  government  is  mistaken,  because  it's  not 
empty  at  all.  It's  already  cluttered  up  with  a  lot  of  things,  and  so 
when  we  put  something  else  up  there  and  put  a  little  energy  there, 
it  interacts  with  the  stuff  that's  already  there  that  we've  put  there. 
This  is  not  appreciated.  Well,  I  believe  it's  a  grave  mistake  to  do 
experiments  in  space  that  can  be  done  underground,  or  in  tanks,  or 
in  other  places.  And  the  NTS  has  the  capacity  to  allow  us  to  do 
many  space-like  experiments.  Now,  they  say,  "Oh,  you  can't  have 
a  mountain  that  will  hold  a  vacuum."  A  lot  of  the  key  questions  that 


The  Nevada  Test  Site 


119 


you  need  to  answer  in  space  are  not  those  questions,  and  they  could 
be  answered  easily  in  Nevada.  So,  I  think  we  ought  to  preserve  the 
Test  Site  for  space  research,  strangely  enough. 

Carothers:  That  does  seem  strange. 

Brownlee:  But  let  me  use  this  analogy;  I  said  we  originally 
thought  of  using  the  Test  Site  on  the  way  to  the  Pacific.  I  think  we 
ought  to  use  the  Test  Site  on  the  way  to  space.  And  so  I'm  not  really 
talking  about  space  experiments,  I'm  talking  about  some  stepping 
stones  on  the  way  there.  And  for  reasons  that  are  lost  to  me,  there's 
almost  nobody  who  understands  that  yet,  although  I  think  they  will 
in  time. 

DNA  is  leading  us  there.  I  think  they're  leading  us  in  that 
direction,  and  eventually  these  things  will  occur  to  people.  Now, 
when  they  do,  will  the  Test  Site  be  available?  I'm  afraid  it  won't  be, 
and  so  that  gives  me  grave  concern. 

What  I'm  doing  here  is  taking  an  exceedingly  broad  view,  and 
I  know  that.  Let  me  summarize  ail  this  up  by  saying,  "I  think  we  need 
to  look  at  the  Test  Site  with  much  broader,  much  wider-angled 
glasses  than  we  have  the  habit  of  doing."  I  feel  very  strongly  about 
that,  but  unfortunately  I  can't  convert  anybody. 

From  the  first  detonations  at  the  Test  Site  in  1951  until  1957, 
when  the  first  underground  shots  were  fired,  the  geologic  structure 
of  the  Test  Site  was  of  little  importance.  There  were  a  number  of  air 
drops,  devices  were  placed  on  towers,  suspended  from  balloons, 
fired  on  the  surface,  and  two  that  were  emplaced  at  the  modest 
depths  of  12  and  67  feet.  The  only  information  about  the  geology 
that  was  required  was  enough  to  allow  the  design  of  the  footings  for 
the  towers. 

In  the  Plumbbob  operation  in  1957  the  first  underground 
events  were  fired.  It  began  to  matter  what  lay  beneath  the  surface, 
for  the  tunnels  that  were  being  dug  and  the  emplacement  holes  that 
were  being  drilled. 

Twenhofel:  In  the  early  days  there  were  two  aspects  of  Survey 
work  here.  One  was  ground  water  contamination.  What  was  the 
water  table  like,  and  where  was  it.  So  there  was  some  drilling  done, 
and  ground  water  testing.  The  contamination  of  water  was  the 
impetus  for  that.  The  other  thing  was  mapping.  There  were  some 
early  explorers  who  came  through  the  country,  and  there  were 


1 20  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

geologists  attached  to  them  sometimes,  so  there  was  a  general 
knowledge  of  the  Test  Site  area.  There  had  been  some  mining  in  this 
region,  but  there  were  no  geologic  maps.  The  first  overall  report 
on  the  geology  of  the  Nevada  Test  Site  was  done  by  two  geologists 
named  Johnson  and  Hibbard,  who  were  assigned  out  here  with*  the 
Army.  That  was  probably  in  about  1 952.  No  comprehensive  study 
had  been  done  until  those  two  Army  guys  mapped  the  Test  Site. 

On  their  map  they  plotted  the  kinds  of  rocks  that  occur  at  the 
surface.  If  the  rocks  dip  at  an  angle,  you  plot  on  the  map  that  dip. 
You  end  up  with  a  map  that  shows  the  occurrence  of  the  various 
rocks  that  you  can  see  at  the  surface.  You  have  to  have  a  good  base 
map  so  you  know  where  you  are,  so  you  can  be  relatively  accurate 
about  where  the  various  formations  are.  The  U.S.  Geological 
Survey  published  that  report  later,  (Geology  of  the  Atomic  Energy 
Commission  Nevada  Proving  Grounds  Area,  Nevada,  Geological 
Survey  Bulletin  1021-K)  when  the  interest  in  underground  events 
began  to  grow. 

The  first  thing  that  happened  when  the  underground  program 
began  to  materialize  was  that  the  USGS  said,  "Well,  we've  got  to 
have  modern  topographic  maps."  Those  are  the  quadrangle  maps 
that  are  used  today.  So,  that  part  of  the  USGS  which  is  called  the 
Topographic  Mapping  Division  flew  the  area  for  aerial  photographs 
and  then  made  the  topographic  maps.  Those  were  done,  and  the 
next  thing  was  to  map  the  surface  geology  on  the  new  topographic 
maps.  It  was  in  the  late  1 950's  to  early  1 960's  when  the  geologic 
mapping  was  done.  And,  they're  the  maps  that  are  still  used  today. 

Orkild:  In  '58  we  opened  an  office  in  Denver,  and  that  same 
year  they  said,  "Ah  ha,  you're  a  photo-geologist.  We  have  this  big 
Nevada  Test  Site  out  there.  We  want  you  to  analyze  the  western 
part  of  it,  using  photos."  I  said,  "All  right,"  never  having  looked 
at  volcanic  rocks  before,  but  sure,  we  can  do  anything.  If  we  can 
find  uranium,  we  can  find  volcanic  rocks.  So  that's  how  I  got 
involved  in  Test  Site  work.  In  1961  i  joined  what  they  called  the 
Special  Projects  Branch,  which  was  formed  to  do  work  on  the  Test 
Site.  And  then  I  took  over  and  started  doing  photo-geologic 
techniques  for  the  mapping  of  the  Test  Site. 

The  USGS  had  been  involved  in  '57,  '58  in  the  tunnel  work  out 
in  the  Rainier  Mesa  area  doing  some  of  the  pioneer  work  for  doing 
shots  in  tunnels,  and  containment  in  tunnels.  Prior  to  Rainier  the 


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USGS  did  two  high  explosive  shots  in  tunnels  in  Rainier  Mesa. 
Those  were  right  where  the  miners'  camp  is  now.  They  were  in  east 
Rainier  Mesa;  not  Rainier  Mesa  proper.  They  were  a  little  to  the 
west  of  the  Area  1 2  camp. 

Twenhofel:  The  Survey  shot  the  first  contained  high  explosive 
tests  at  the  Test  Site.  There  were  two;  ten  tons  and  fifty  tons.  They 
were  done  in  Rainier  Mesa,  in  what  were  called  the  USGS  tunnels. 
As  far  as  I  know,  those  ten  and  fifty  ton  shots  were  the  only  high 
explosive  tests  done  at  that  time.  They  were  done  entirely  by  the 
USGS,  for  containment  purposes.  They  were  steps  in  scaling  up  to 
Rainier. 

Carothers:  Do  you  recall  how  the  USGS  become  involved  in 
detonating  rather  large  amounts  of  high  explosives? 

Orkild:  1  guess  they  were  sitting  there,  minding  their  own 
business,  and  one  day  got  called  by  somebody  in  the  AEC  who  said, 
"We  need  somebody  who  has  experience  in  mining.  You  dig  holes 
in  the  earth,  so  you  must  know  something  about  it."  Of  course, 
nobody  knew  anything  about  it.  Including  me. 

But  the  first  reason  we  got  involved  with  the  Test  Site  was  to 
understand  what  the  rocks  were.  And  that's  how  the  mapping 
started  up  in  the  Rainier  Mesa  area.  The  USGS  started  mapping  in 
quadrangles,  so  to  speak.  The  Rainier  Mesa  was  done  first,  and  then 
it  expanded  from  there.  During  the  moratorium  was  when  we  did 
most  of  the  geologic  mapping  in  the  northern  part  of  the  Test  Site; 
Rainier  Mesa,  and  over  toward  Oak  Spring  Butte,  and  the  Climax 
Stock.  That's  when  the  quadrangle  series  mapping  started;  it  started 
out  to  be  three  quadrangles.  I  think  they're  called  Tippapah, 
Rainier,  and  White  Rock  Spring.  When  we  finished  that  we  had  a 
big  celebration  and  said,  "Hey,  we're  done  with  the  Test  Site.  We'll 
never  have  to  come  back.  We  finished  all  this  mapping,  and  we're 
done."  That  was  in  '60  or  '61,  and  then,  lo  and  behold,  the 
moratorium  was  over,  and  things  picked  up  very  actively. 

Carothers:  Do  you  know  how  it  was  that  Rainier  Mesa  was 
chosen  for  the  Rainier  event?  Do  you  think  it  just  that  the  mesa 
happened  to  be  there,  or  was  there  a  particular  geologic  reason  to 
pick  it? 


1 22  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Orkild:  Well,  I  think  both.  I  think  it  was  there,  it  was  a  nice 
mesa,  and  it  had  very  mineable  rocks.  1  don't  think  anybody  worried 
about  the  physical  properties  of  the  rocks;  it  was  just  a  place  to  put 
a  hole  in  the  ground.  The  tuffs  are  easy  to  mine;  they're  very 
competent,  they  hold  up  quite  well,  and  you  can  make  a  tunnel  in 
them  very  easily.  It's  easy  mining  really,  better  than  mining  in  very 
hard  rock. 

By  1957  the  USGS  had  a  role  at  the  NTS  that  has  continued  to 
the  present  time.  Both  Los  Alamos  and  Livermore  have  had  a 
continuing  involvement  with  the  Site,  and  both  of  the  Laboratories 
established  organizations  with  people  permanently  stationed  in 
Nevada.  However,  the  USGS  did  not. 

Twenhofel:  None  of  us  ever  moved  to  Las  Vegas.  There  was 
a  lot  of  pressure  from  the  AEC  to  move  the  USGS  group,  because 
it  was  a  fairly  sizable  group  as  things  developed  in  underground 
testing,  but  we  resisted  that.  Jim  Reeves  was  the  Manager,  from 
Albuquerque,  and  he  tried  to  exert  pressure  to  have  the  USGS 
group  move  here.  Studies  were  made  about  the  costs  of  air  travel, 
and  per  diem,  and  so  on,  but  the  move  never  came  about.  It  was 
not  the  people  who  resisted;  the  organization  resisted.  The  USGS 
is  somewhat  paranoid  about  becoming  beholden  to  outside  money. 
We  do  take  it,  but  we're  going  to  keep  our  independence  and  our 
objectivity.  There  was  a  real  fear  that  if  this  group,  assigned  to  work 
at  the  Test  Site,  would  go  there  and  be  officed  near  or  in  the  AEC, 
the  people  in  it  might  lose  their  independence  and  their  objectivity. 
That's  a  strong  feeling  in  the  USGS.  So  we  never  moved  down  here; 
we  commuted  and  lived  at  Mercury. 

At  one  time  we  had  one  person  stationed  here,  and  we  rotated. 
We  had  a  liaison  office,  you  might  call  it.  The  guys  would  come 
down  here  for  a  month  and  be  in  the  liaison  position,  but  it  just 
didn't  work.  That  person  had  no  authority. 

Jenkins:  Since  1966  I  have  put  my  roots  down  on  the  Test 
Site.  I  think  the  geologic  work  at  the  Test  Site  is  fantastically 
interesting.  There  are  very  few  places  where  so  much  drilling  has 
been  done,  and  so  much  data  have  been  collected.  There  are  a  lot 
of  concepts  being  developed  as  a  result  of  the  exploration  at  the 
Site.  That  is  what  makes  it  a  really  fascinating  place  to  work. 


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123 


In  the  Flats  there  are  about  nine  hundred  holes  that  have  given 
information  we  can  use.  Up  on  the  Mesa,  perhaps  a  hundred. 
Nowhere  else  in  the  world  do  you  have  a  buried  volcanic  caldera 
with  that  much  exploration.  It's  just  unreal.  Nobody  else  can  afford 
it. 

Carothers:  Probably  not.  Well,  the  Department  of  Energy 
hasn't  done  that  just  for  you  geologists,  out  of  the  goodness  of  its 
heart.  Do  you  get  a  good  amount  of  information  out  of  those  holes? 

Jenkins:  Oh  yes.  And  as  time  goes  on,  more  information  is 
gotten  out  of  them.  When  I  first  got  here  we  were  getting  caliper 
logs  and  drill-hole  bit  cuttings;  occasionally  some  core.  That  was 
about  it.  Now  we  know  something  about  the  magnetic  properties 
of  the  rock.  We  have  good  information  on  the  density  of  the  units, 
in  situ,  and  of  course  the  electrical  resistivity  logging  has  developed 
as  time  has  gone  on,  but  we  don't  really  use  ail  that  we  could  of  that. 
We  can  get  the  in-situ  water  contents  now.  There's  the  thorium- 
potassium  ratio  from  the  logs,  and  in  our  work  that  helps  in 
determining  which  units  have  clay.  The  technology  has  developed 
by  leaps  and  bounds  since  I  got  here.  It's  a  real  opportunity. 

Carothers:  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  person  selecting  a  site 
for  an  event,  it  appears  that  you  could  consider  the  Test  Site  as  made 
up  of  three  general  areas.  There's  the  Yucca  Flat  area,  which  is  deep 
alluvium  over  tuffs,  there's  Rainier  Mesa,  which  has  extensive  layers 
of  tuffs,  and  then  there  is  Pahute  Mesa,  which  has  various  lava  flows 
throughout. 

Orkild:  That's  correct. 

Carothers:  How  would  you  describe  Rainier  Mesa? 

Orkild:  It's  a  mesa  of  layered  volcanic  rocks.  They  were  laid 
down  essentially  horizontally;  some  by  water  and  some  by  air,  and 
compacted  into  a  very  cohesive  mass  of  rock. 

Off  to  the  west  there  were  a  couple  of  volcanos,  and  they  were 
spewing  ash  and  debris  out.  Some  of  that  was  flowing  with  the  wind 
and  settling  out  as  dust.  Other  material  that  was  blown  up  further 
came  down  as  big  clots,  and  some  came  down  as  hot  glowing  ash. 
These  volcanos  were  to  the  west  of  the  Test  Site  proper,  over  in  what 
we  call  the  Timber  Mountain  area,  but  the  actual  source  for  those 
rocks  we  don't  know.  There  were  never  actual  lava  flows  on  Rainier, 
because  it's  too  far  away  from  the  sources. 


124 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


The  later  rocks,  like  the  Rainier  Mesa  tuff,  came  from  the 
Timber  Mountain  Caldera.  The  Grouse  Canyon  tuffs  came  from  the 
Silent  Canyon  Caldera.  Those  calderas  are  very  close  —  only  ten, 
twenty  miles  away.  On  Pahute  Mesa  you're  very  close  to  the 
sources  of  all  of  the  lavas,  so  you  do  have  flows  and  pillows  —  one 
going  out  to  the  west,  one  going  to  the  east,  some  going  to  the 
south,  some  going  over  the  top  of  others,  and  so  on. 

What  you're  looking  at  in  Rainier  are  the  outflow  sheets  from 
those  volcanic  features.  Some  of  the  material  rolled  and  surged 
down  the  mountainside,  and  came  to  rest  in  the  place  where  Rainier 
Mesa  is  today.  Time  went  on,  and  some  thirteen,  fourteen  million 
years  ago,  maybe  ten,  Y ucca  Flat  started  to  subside,  and  left  Rainier 
Mesa  as  a  high  monolith,  essentially  as  you  see  it.  Its  formation  was 
accelerated  by  erosion,  and  the  cliffs  formed,  and  the  rocks  from  the 
face  fell  into  the  flats.  In  Yucca,  the  faults  that  go  down  through  the 
valley  occasionally  move  over  time,  and  form  scarps,  and  the  valley 
spreads  a  little  more  and  settles  some  more.  It  is  still  moving  today. 

Carothers:  On  Rainier  Mesa  there  is  a  layer  of  hard  rocks  -  -  the 
cap  rock.  Is  that  why  Rainier  Mesa  is  there? 

Orkild:  That's  right.  It  has  preserved  Rainier  Mesa  itself,  being 
a  hard  rock.  Essentially  what  the  Rainier  Mesa  cap  rock  is  doing  is 
protecting  the  very  vitric,  soft  Paintbrush  Tuff  beneath  it.  Now, 
that  cap  rock,  the  Rainier  Mesa  member,  has  a  lot  of  vertical 
fractures  in  it,  due  to  the  way  it  was  formed.  As  it  cooled,  it  shrunk 
and  formed  into  square  blocks  and  polygonal  blocks,  and  that's  very 
typical  of  that  type  of  rock  unit  deposit.  You  see  the  same  thing  on 
Pahute  Mesa.  You  would  see  the  same  thing  beneath  Yucca  Flat,  if 
you  could  see  through  the  alluvium.  It  is  what  happened  to  any  of 
the  units  that  are  welded,  or  have  some  form  of  welding.  They  start 
as  a  very  hot  layered  mass,  which  sticks  together  and  compacts,  and 
then  as  it  cools  it  cracks. 

Carothers:  There  have  been  a  number  of  tunnels  that  have 
been  mined  into  Rainier.  Are  they  all  being  put  into  the  same  block 
of  material? 

Orkild:  Essentially.  They're  all  in  the  Tunnel  Beds.  There  are 
very  different  units  in  the  Tunnel  Beds,  but  essentially  they  are  all 
the  same  rock  types.  Except  P  tunnel,  which  is  much  higher  in  the 
stratigraphic  section.  It's  up  in  what  we  call  the  Paintbrush,  which 


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125 


is  above  the  Tunnel  Beds.  But  I  don't  think  those  tuffs  are  very 
different.  The  physical  properties  are  very,  very  similar.  The 
porosity  might  be  higher  in  some  of  them,  especially  as  you  get  into 
the  upper  units  that  are  not  as  welded,  not  as  altered.  This  is  also 
true  of  any  event  down  in  Yucca  Flat,  or  in  Pahute. 

Carothers:  What  are  Paleozoic  rocks? 

Orkild:  They  are  the  older  rocks  that  form  the  basement  of  the 
Yucca  Flat,  and  the  whole  Test  Site,  essentially.  They  are  the 
limestones,  or  the  dolomites,  or  the  shales.  They  were  there  before 
the  volcanos  —  many,  many  millions  of  years  before  the  volcanos. 

Carothers:  There  might  have  been  a  time  when  I  could  have 
walked  around  on  them.  What  would  they  have  looked  like? 

Orkild:  Just  like  the  Rocky  Mountains.  And  then  there  were 
the  eruptions  which  filled  the  various  valleys  and  troughs. 

Carothers:  In  Yucca  Flat,  are  the  tuffs  below  the  alluvium  the 
same  rocks  that  are  in  Rainier  Mesa? 

Orkild:  Essentially.  The  tuffs  have  exactly  the  same  strati¬ 
graphic  sequence  on  Rainier  Mesa  as  you  have  on  Yucca  Flat.  Once 
upon  a  time  they  were  connected.  The  Grouse  Canyon  was  a  layer 
that  was  deposited  probably  all  over  Yucca  Flat  and  Rainier  Mesa. 
Now  you  find  it  on  the  top  of  Oak  Spring  Butte,  and  also  many 
thousands  of  feet  below  in  Yucca  Flat. 

Carothers:  So,  most  of  the  things  that  you  say  about  the  tuff 
units  on  Rainier  Mesa  should  also  be  true  of  the  tuff  units  in  Yucca. 

Orkild:  That's  correct.  The  alteration  is  very  much  the  same. 
The  physical  properties  are  very,  very  similar.  And  very  likely  there 
are  blocks  just  like  those  in  Rainier  Mesa. 

Jenkins:  Right  under  the  alluvium  in  Yucca  Flat  is  the  Rainier 
Mesa  member,  which  is  the  same  ashflow  tuff  that  you  find  on 
Rainier  Mesa  and  on  Pahute. 

Carroll:  With  one  exception,  which  is  the  alteration  phenom¬ 
enon.  That  stuff  has  been  there  for  twelve,  fourteen  million  years. 
Having  been  there  that  length  of  time,  there's  another  imprint  that 
goes  upon  the  rock.  That's  the  effect  of  moisture,  and  of  heat. 
There  is  water  coming  down  and  creating  accessory  minerals  —  the 
clays,  and  the  zeolites.  And  although  one  argues  in  certain  places 


126 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


that  this  is  Tunnel  Bed  A,  and  that  is  Tunnel  Bed  A,  in  Area  3  it  may 
not  be  altered  as  opposed  to  the  bed  in  Area  9.  Stratigraphy  to  me 
has  always  been  a  problem,  because  1  don't  like  people  to  tell  me  the 
name  of  a  rock.  Like  "metasediment,"  which  is  a  popular  term,  I 
think,  in  the  Soviet  Union  now.  That  name  means  nothing  to  me 
as  a  geophysicist.  What  is  it?  Teii  me  the  density,  tell  me  the 
porosity,  tell  me  something  more  than  a  name  you've  made  up. 

Rambo:  In  terms  of  material  properties,  those  rocks  beneath 
the  alluvium  in  Yucca  may  have  had  a  whole  different  experience 
than  the  ones  in  Rainier.  It's  the  same  ashfall,  but  from  the  materials 
properties  view  I  think  there  are  some  differences.  If  you  do  shear 
strength  measurements  on  the  tuffs  in  the  tunnels,  they  will  look 
quite  a  bit  different  from  the  measurements  we  do  out  in  the  Flat. 
And  take  the  Grouse  Canyon  layer.  Out  in  the  Flat  that  means 
something  highly  porous,  and  usually  to  us  means  something  very 
weak.  In  the  tunnels  it  is  a  very  strong,  highly  welded  member,  and 
I  wouldn't  say  it  had  anywhere  near  the  same  gas-filled  porosity  as 
in  the  Flats.  But  it's  the  same  low  density  unit. 

Miller:  I  never  did  consider  the  tuff  directly  beneath  the 
alluvium  in  Yucca  to  be  the  same  as  Rainier  Mesa  tuff.  It  drills 
differently.  The  Rainier  Mesa  tuff  you  run  into  in  Area  12,  and 
Areas  19  and  20,  is  one  hard  rock.  Whatever  is  underneath  the 
alluvium  in  Yucca  Flat  is  not  a  hard  rock.  It's  not  that  much  more 
difficult  to  drill  than  the  alluvium.  The  fact  is,  often  times  the 
penetration  rate  was  not  that  much  different  than  the  alluvium.  In 
Yucca,  where  you  usually  hit  the  hard  drilling  is  when  you  hit  the 
Paleozoic;  when  you  hit  the  limestone  or  dolomite.  The  tuff 
underneath  the  alluvium  in  Yucca  Flat  is  a  different  rock  than  you 
find  in  Area  20. 

Carothers:  In  Yucca,  how  thick  is  this  layer  of  Rainier  Mesa 

tuff? 

Jenkins:  It's  quite  variable.  On  the  east  side  of  the  valley  it's 
quite  thin  —  maybe  a  hundred  feet.  In  the  thickest  part  of  the  Flat, 
where  the  unit  is  thickest,  probably  close  to  five  hundred  feet.  And 
on  Pahute  Mesa  it's  very  much  a  thousand  feet  thick  all  over.  The 
Rainier  is  the  surface  unit  there. 


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127 


Carothers:  If  I  were  to  go  to  some  place  in  Yucca  Flat,  and  drill 
down  through  the  alluvium,  I  might  be  able  to  drill  several  hundred 
feet  into  this  Rainier  Mesa  member,  and  have  the  working  point  in 
it? 

Jenkins:  Right.  It's  been  done  often. 

Carothers:  Well,  it  would  seem  that  with  the  number  of  joints, 
or  cracks  that  is  in  that  rock,  there  would  be  a  lot  of  pathways  for 
gas  to  get  to  the  top  of  that  Rainier  Mesa  layer. 

Jenkins:  It's  true  they  could  be  quite  convenient  pathways. 

Carothers:  Yucca  Flat  and  Pahute  Mesa  are  two  very  different 
regions,  aren't  they,  in  terms  of  structure?  Pahute  is  composed 
largely  of  lavas,  and  Yucca  is  mostly  tuffs  of  one  kind  and  another, 
comvered  by  the  alluvium. 

Jenkins:  Yes,  I  agree  with  you,  but  the  same  generic  units,  from 
the  same  volcanic  centers,  are  in  both  places.  And  you  have  almost 
the  same  rock  on  Rainier  as  caps  a  lot  of  Pahute  Mesa.  Now,  the 
stratigraphic  section  on  Rainier  is  rather  compressed  as  compared  to 
that  on  Pahute  Mesa.  In  other  words,  there  are  units  on  Rainier  that 
are  very  lithologically  similar  to  those  we  find  in  Pahute  Mesa,  but 
they're  compressed.  They  aren't  quite  as  thick.  There  was  not  as 
deep  a  hole  to  fill,  if  you  will. 

Carothers:  Pahute  was  added  to  the  original  Test  Site  in  1 964. 
Why  was  that  area  chosen,  aside  from  the  fact  that  it  was  directly 
adjacent  to  the  existing  site? 

Jenkins:  I  think  the  biggest  factor  that  led  to  the  identification 
of  Pahute  Mesa  as  a  testing  area  was  the  gravity  data  work.  That 
work  identified  low  density  material,  at  depth,  in  this  big  circular 
situation.  And  of  course,  the  good  thinkers  could  look  to  the  south 
and  see  Timber  Mountain,  which  is  an  exposed  caldera.  And  the 
good  thinker  said,  "Well,  this  must  be  another  caldera.  Therefore 
it  has  a  variety  of  volcanic  rocks  at  depth,  instead  of  the  Paleozoic 
rocks  which  we  find  underneath  Yucca  Flat". 

There  were  a  number  of  exploratory  drill  holes  that  the  USGS 
did.  Pahute  Mesa  1  and  2,  Ue20f,  Ue20j  -  the  water  well,  Uel  9c, 
—  and  Uel  9b.  All  of  them  were  quite  deep.  Ue20f  was  fifteen 
thousand  or  so  feet,  and  a  lot  of  them  went  greater  than  five 
thousand.  And  so,  we  got  a  pretty  good  picture  of  what  we  were 
dealing  with  there. 


1 2  8  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Carothers:l  think  of  Pahute  as  being  a  different  type  of 
containment  structure  from  Rainier  Mesa,  or  Y ucca  Flat,  because  it 
has  layers  which  are  very  hard  rock. 

Jenkins:  The  lavas.  Well,  the  lavas  are  probably  the  only 
difference,  because  you  have  densely  welded  ashflow  tuffs  in  all 
areas.  The  Grouse  Canyon  in  the  Flat  is  probably  airfall  or  non- 
welded  ashflow.  Of  course,  it's  thin.  Under  parts  of  Rainier  Mesa, 
and  under  Pahute  Mesa,  it's  densely  welded. 

Orkild:  Pahute  Mesa  is  where  the  lava  was  molten,  and  flowed 
out  from  an  active  volcano,  which  was  very,  very  close  -  -  within 
miles.  Normally  the  hot  lavas  don't  go  more  than  ten  miles  away 
from  their  source.  Being  a  viscous,  gooey  mass,  they  stay  very  close. 
They  went  in  one  direction,  then  that  would  clog  up,  and  then  they 
went  in  another  direction.  That's  what  really  generated  some  of  the 
blobbier  structures. 

Carothers:  What's  between  the  various  lava  flows  on  Pahute? 

Orkild:  Generally  material  that  was  ejected  out  of  the  volcano 
as  ash  or  brechiated  rock,  rock  that  is  broken  up.  Ash  is  hot  volcanic 
material  that  is  blown  into  the  air  and  then  cooled.  The  molten  rock 
comes  out,  and  when  it  gets  to  the  atmosphere  it  vesiculates  into  a 
nice  big  frothy  ball  that  becomes  disaggregated,  and  falls  back  to  the 
surface. 

The  deposits  that  are  what  we  call  airfall,  dropping  onto  the 
ground,  will  form  a  very  thin  rind.  Normally  what  you  will  see  if  you 
have  any  extreme  topography  between  various  flows  is  that  the  rains 
have  washed  this  airfall  material  into  gullies  and  other  low  spots. 
Many  times  you  can  see  peculiar  dips  on  the  Mesa,  and  they  are  on 
those  slopes  where  the  material  has  been  deposited,  and  then 
washed  off. 

Carothers:  There  would  be  considerable  differences  in  the 
properties  of  the  material  in  the  lava  flows,  and  in  those  places  filled 
with  the  ash,  wouldn't  there?  Density  differences,  for  example. 

Orkild:  Sure.  The  lavas  could  be  very  dense,  and  the  ashflows 
could  be  very  low  density.  There  are  a  number  of  density  contrasts, 
especially  going  out  of  the  very  dense  lavas  into  the  very  vitric  tuffs, 
back  into  dense  rock,  back  into  soft  rock,  and  then  back  into  hard 
rock. 


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Carothers:  In  Yucca,  which  in  a  sense  is  a  somewhat  less 
complex  structure,  people  took  a  lot  of  logging  data  and  sample 
data,  but  in  the  first  years  they  didn't  do  ail  of  that  on  Pahute.  The 
geologists  would  say,  "Weil,  the  properties  are  extrapolated  in." 
How  can  you  go  to  a  structure  like  Pahute,  which  has  pillows  of  lava, 
and  many  kinds  of  layers,  and  do  that? 

Jenkins:  Because  on  Pahute  Mesa  the  units  have  better 
identification,  and  therefore  a  unit  there,  a  subunit,  whatever,  can 
be  projected  much  better  under  Pahute  Mesa  than  it  can  be  on  the 
Flats  where  you  really  don't  have  that  good  a  handle  on  what  the 
units  are. 

Carothers:  is  that  another  way  of  saying  that  the  units  on 
Pahute  Mesa  are  so  different,  one  from  the  other,  that  you  can  see 
them  readily? 

Jenkins:  Yes.  The  units  are  so  different,  one  from  another,  that 
they  can  be  easily  distinguished  one  from  another.  That's  a  good 
statement.  In  the  Flats  you  have  the  fallout  of  all  of  this  volcanic 
activity,  and  it's  just  very  hard  to  distinguish  among  them.  Now  of 
course,  that  depends  on  what  kind  of  a  scale  you  want  your  physical 
properties  on.  If  it's  a  very  wide  scale,  then  the  whole  unit  between 
the  Timber  Mountain  tuff  and  the  Paleozoic  rocks  could  be  gener¬ 
alized.  On  Pahute  you'd  have  to  have  parts  of  it  here,  and  parts  of 
it  there,  and  other  parts  of  it  over  there  in  order  to  make  that 
statement. 

Orkild:  I  think  that,  as  far  as  we're  talking  about  the  physical 
parameters,  there's  no  longer  a  difference  in  the  data  gathering.  It's 
true  that  most  of  the  physical  properties  were  extrapolated  from  the 
key  fifteen  exploratory  holes  that  were  drilled  up  there.  You  saw 
the  same  type  of  unit  in  the  next  hole,  and  said,  "All  right,  this  is 
very  similar.  Therefore  we'll  extrapolate."  And  there  was  really 
nothing  wrong  with  that.  It  was  very  successful  for  thirty-four 
events. 

Carothers:  That  depends  on  with  whom  you  want  to  argue. 
There  are  some  who  might  say,  "Yes,  but  all  of  those  events  were 
high  enough  in  yield  to  be  the  kind  of  shots  that  don't  leak.  You're 
just  lucky  that  you  only  shoot  high  yield  shots  in  that  very  complex, 
little  known,  variable  density  medium.  You  try  to  shoot  low  yield 
shots,  as  you  do  in  Yucca,  who  knows  what  would  happen?  At  nine 
hundred  feet  or  so  for  a  ten  kiloton  shot,  it  might  not  be  the  same. 


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CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Orkild:  1  would  be  very  nervous  with  something  like  that, 
because  of  the  Rainier  Mesa  tuff  unit  that's  at  the  surface  there. 
That  Rainier  Mesa  material  has  cooling  cracks  all  through  it.  It 
cooled  as  one  unit.  It  came  out  in  multiple  flows,  but  it  all  stacked 
up,  very  thick,  and  compressed.  As  it  cooled,  the  cracks  formed  in 
the  vitrophyre  in  maybe  a  different  pattern  than  they  formed  in  the 
upper  part  of  it,  but  those  cracks  are  essentially  through-going. 
That  layer  is  about  a  thousand  feet  thick,  and  that  means  those 
fractures  go  down  that  far.  Once  you  drop  below  that  layer,  unless 
you're  near  a  fault  you  have  very  few  fractures  of  that  kind. 

Carothers:  Then  if  I  shoot  at  sixteen  hundred  feet  or  so,  I'm 
only  a  few  hundred  feet  below  that  layer.  I  don't  have  to  go  very 
far  to  get  to  those  fractures.  And  then  the  gases  can  move  rather 
freely  through  the  fractures,  even  if  any  single  one  doesn't  extend 
all  the  way  through  the  unit. 

Orkild:  That's  right,  if  you  only  have  the  Rainier  Mesa  member 
as  the  rock  at  the  top.  That's  in  Area  1 9.  When  you  go  over  into 
Area  20,  you  have  other  units  above  the  Rainier.  The  events  where 
you  see  late-time  gas  seepage  are  mostly  over  in  Area  1 9,  and  they 
are  directly  related  to  whether  the  Rainier  Mesa  layer  was  near  the 
surface.  West  of  there,  other  units,  the  Thirsty  Canyon  and  the 
other  ashflows,  sit  on  top  of  it,  and  those  cracks  are  essentially 
sealed  off  at  the  upper  part.  Late-time  gases  certainly  came  up  into 
them  somewhere,  but  they  didn't  get  to  the  surface  because  they 
could  disperse  into  those  thin,  very  porous  layers  that  were  inter- 
tongued  with  denser  units. 

One  of  the  features  of  the  Test  Site  that  has  been  considered  as 
possibly  adversly  affecting  the  probability  of  successful  containment 
are  the  faults  that  occur  throughout  the  site.  Generally  the  faults 
with  substantial  displacements  are  avoided  -  -  when  they  are  known. 
Some  faults,  such  as  the  one  known  as  the  Carpetbag  fault,  are  not 
detected  until  some  movement  occurs  as  a  result  of  a  nearby 
detonation.  How  dangerous  faults  are  with  respect  to  containment 
is  largely  unknown,  and  is  a  matter  of  individual  judgment. 

Carothers:  At  the  Test  Site  there  are  many  faults,  cracks  that 
show  that  movement  has  taken  place. 


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131 


Orkild:  Yes,  many  of  them,  some  with  up  to  forty  meters  of 
displacement  in  Rainier  Mesa,  where  we  can  see  them  in  the  tunnels. 
That's  a  large  fault  for  Rainier  Mesa,  and  it  would  probably  be  the 
largest  that  you'll  see  there.  And  you  do  see  displacements  down 
to  inches  in  the  tunnels.  In  Yucca  there  are  faults  with  much  more 
displacement  than  that,  but  on  those  the  displacement  has  to  be 
inferred  from  seismic  surveys  and  exploratory  holes.  Normally 
when  you  see  a  fault  it's  not  one  fault  plane,  but  a  series  of  fault 
planes  that  might  make  up  a  total  displacement  of  maybe  ten  feet, 
distributed  on  five  or  six  of  these  faults. 

These  faults  are  held  very  tightly  together  by  the  overburden. 
There  are  no  open  standing  fractures.  They  are  a  plane  of  weakness, 
but  I  don't  think  they're  a  plane  of  transport.  I  don't  think  faults 
necessarily  have  to  be  bad  for  containment,  but  I  think  the  system 
should  be  aware  of  them,  and  plan  accordingly. 

It  would  be  nice  to  be  able  to  try  a  shot  on  the  Yucca  fault. 
Many  years  ago,  on  Pahute  Mesa,  there  was  an  event  very  close  to 
a  structure  over  in  Area  20.  That  was  back  in  the  Rae  Blossom  days. 
He  said,  "Let's  try  it.  Let's  see  what  happens."  Nothing  happened. 
The  fault  moved  very  nicely,  very  handily,  something  like  five  or  six 
feet.  But  there  was  no  reason  to  think  it  affected  the  containment. 
There  was  no  release. 

Carothers:  The  closest  shot  to  the  Yucca  fault  that  I  can 
remember  was  in  '72.  It  was  called  Oscuro,  which  was  a  Los  Alamos 
shot  fired  on  the  east  side  of  the  Yucca  fault,  fairly  close. 

Orkild:  And  close  to  a  very  large  northeast  fault.  My  personal 
feeling  is  that  it  would  have  vented  if  it  hadn't  collapsed  when  it  did. 
I  remember  going  out  and  looking  at  the  post-shot  effects,  and  I 
said,  "I  don't  know  how  this  thing  stayed  in  the  ground."  Every¬ 
thing  was  standing  open.  The  fracture  that  broke  to  the  northeast 
was  standing  open  a  good  foot  and  a  half  or  two  feet  at  the  surface, 
beyond  where  the  collapse  had  occurred.  That  northeast  fault  is  in 
tension,  and  that's  the  thing  that  would  stand  open,  because  there's 
nothing  to  close  it  up.  I  think  that  was  a  very,  very  close  experience. 
The  only  thing  I  think  that  saved  it  was  the  collapse.  If  that  had  sat 
there  for  any  length  of  time,  I  think  we'd  have  been  hit. 

Carothers:  How  do  you  know  whether  a  fault  is  under 
compression  or  is  in  tension? 


132  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Orkild:  In  certain  cases  I  think  we  know  based  on  the  overall 
structure.  When  we  look  at  some  of  the  northeast  trending  faults 
off  the  Yucca  Fault,  we  can  say  that  very  likely  they  are  in  tension 
—  they're  pulling  apart.  That's  how  the  basin-range  formed  in  the 
first  place.  There  are  areas  within  the  Test  Site  that  are  under  those 
conditions.  That's  based  on  the  physical  parameters  that  they  have 
found  on  drilling  on  the  Mesa,  finding  out  the  principal  stress. 

Carothers:  You  mentioned  the  east  side  of  the  Yucca  fault  as 
an  area  that  is  in  tension.  Does  that  mean  the  west  side  is  in 
compression? 

Orkild:  No.  They  both  could  be  under  compression,  because 
one  side  is  coming  up,  and  the  other  is  going  down,  and  they're  both 
pushing  together.  It's  the  subsidiary  faults  that  come  off  of  the 
Yucca  fault  that  are  being  pulled  apart. 

The  upside  of  the  Yucca  Fault  has  always  been  steered  away 
from  because  you  see  all  of  these  open,  standing  fractures,  which 
means  that  something  has  to  be  under  tension  and  it's  pulling  apart. 
You  would  assume  that  some  of  the  downside  would  be  under 
compression  because  it's  being  pushed  down.  But  there's  another 
wrinkle  to  the  Yucca  Fault  -  it  also  has  lateral  motion.  One  side 
is  moving  laterally  with  respect  to  the  other,  and  as  you  have  that 
motion  you  can  have  tension  along  those  northeast  fractures. 

Carothers:  Would  this  same  situation  obtain  up  on  Rainier 
Mesa,  where  you  might  have  tension  and  compression  areas?  It's 
not  a  very  big  block. 

Orkild:  It's  not  a  very  big  block,  and  probably  what  it's  doing 
is  that  all  of  it  is  moving  radially  toward  it's  edge.  That's  the  way 
you  would  think  it  would  happen  —  that  it  would  move  toward  the 
open-faced  surface,  toward  Yucca  or  toward  Pahute  Mesa. 

Carothers:  Bill,  you  have  said  many  times  over  the  years  that 
you  don't  see  that  faults  really  cause  a  containment  problem,  and 
they  don't  concern  you  particularly. 

Twenhofel:  I  don't  think  faults  are  a  problem  unless  they  move 
on  the  shot. 

Carothers:  How  am  I  going  to  know  whether  that  will  happen 
or  not? 


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133 


Twenhofel:  Well,  we  don't  really  know  that  too  well,  but  we 
know  which  ones  have  moved  on  past  shots.  The  Yucca  fault,  for 
instance,  moves  quite  a  bit,  and  there  are  others.  We  try  to  avoid 
those  because  we  have  the  concept,  and  I  think  it's  valid,  that  a  fault 
isn't  a  perfect  plane,  so  when  they  do  move  there  may  be  openings 
created,  and  that's  a  possible  release  path  if  you're  near  enough. 

So  I  concur  with  the  idea  of  avoiding  the  Yucca  fault,  because 
it  moves.  But  many  of  the  faults  are  not  going  to  move.  There  are 
two  kinds  of  faults.  There  are  tectonic  faults  that  are  created  by 
earth  stresses,  and  they  tend  to  be  big  things.  Then  there  are  a  lot 
of  subsidence  and  compaction  faulting  that  only  occurs  because  the 
rock  is  compressed  a  little  bit  here  by  the  weight  of  the  overlying 
rock,  and  so  it  subsides  a  little  bit  —  there's  a  little  fault.  Those 
things  don't  move,  and  I  don't  think  they're  a  factor. 

I  think  that  if  a  fault  goes  right  through  the  stress  cage  it's  going 
to  be  compacted  and  tightened  right  there,  so  it  can't  possibly  be 
a  path.  When  it's  farther  out  where  it  can  move,  I  think  it  can  be 
a  factor,  but  I  don't  get  alarmed  by  many  of  these  faults.  But  we 
can't  be  very  quantitative  about  it.  It's  very  subjective. 

Weart:  Well,  Pin  Stripe  was  an  early  vertical  Iine-of-sight  pipe 
shot  that  vented  through  a  fault.  It  was  conducted  in  Area  5,  and 
rather  than  being  in  a  drill  hole,  it  was  in  a  shaft  that  had  been 
excavated.  It  had  the  latest  in  closures;  ball  valves,  HE  closures, 
everything.  But,  as  we  found  out  when  we  did  an  investigation  after 
it  vented  in  a  very  massive  way,  all  those  features  had  been 
circumvented.  There  was  a  fault  that  came  into  the  shaft  below 
these  features,  and  it  provided  an  easy  release  path  to  the  surface. 

Carothers:  The  release  was  through  the  fault  itself? 

Weart:  Yes,  we  know  it  was.  It  was  a  very  clear  example.  When 
we  reentered  the  top  of  the  Iine-of-sight  pipe  the  seals  were  closed, 
and  it  was  clean.  And  we  could  trace  the  fault  path  on  the  surface 
of  the  ground. 

It  wasn't  a  fault  that  released  material  directly  from  the  cavity, 
and  I'm  not  sure  that  the  Baneberry  fault  did  either,  although  on 
Baneberry  the  fault  was  much  more  closely  associated  with  the 
cavity  than  the  fault  on  Pin  Stripe.  Whether  or  not  Pin  Stripe  would 


134 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


have  contained  if  the  fault  hadn't  been  there  I  can't  say  for  sure,  but 
it  certainly  was  the  easiest  path.  The  shaft  was  clean  above  that 
point. 

Carothers:  There  are  people  who  say,  "The  geology  at  the  T est 
Site  really  doesn't  matter  as  far  as  containment  goes,  except  in 
exceptional  circumstances.  We  have  fired  so  many  shots  that  we've 
probably  encountered  just  about  every  kind  of  material  and  situa¬ 
tion  that  you  can  imagine.  If  it  mattered  it  would  have  got  us  by 
now."  I  emphasize  they  mean  that  statement  only  with  respect  to 
the  Test  Site,  not  the  world  in  general. 

Orkild:  I  agree  that  if  you  bury  shots  deep  enough  you  don't 
have  any  problems. 

Carothers:  Well,  that's  true,  I  think.  If  you  have  all  the  money 
you  want,  and  all  the  time  you  want,  you  can  certainly  do  that.  But 
coaxial  cable  is  expensive.  Casing  is  expensive.  Drill  holes  are 
expensive.  And  when  you  get  down  below  the  water  table  it  begins 
to  get  very  expensive.  So,  that's  the  kind  of  statement  that  is  true, 
but  it's  not  very  helpful  in  the  real  world.  But  certainly  we  have 
encountered  many  different  kinds  of  geologic  situations,  wouldn't 
you  say,  on  those  many  shots  that  haven't  leaked? 

Orkild:  Yes,  but  there  are  certain  combinations  of  geologic 
conditions  that  can  get  you.  Baneberry  is  an  example. 

Rimer:  Take  Barnwell.  There  was  a  case  where  the  containment 
lore  about  geology  doesn't  matter  came  close  to  being  disproved. 
John  Rambo  was  the  containment  scientist.  It  scared  him  enough 
that  he  had  people  go  there  and  take  cores,  and  measure  strength. 
I'm  sure  he  got  a  lot  of  flak.  He  did  a  number  of  calculations,  and 
we  did  hydrofracture  calculations,  and  everything  said  that  the  thing 
was  going  to  be  contained.  We  came  to  the  CEP  with  that 
information,  and  I  forget  who,  but  somebody  said,  "We've  never 
had  a  problem  with  a  shot  of  this  size  at  that  depth  of  burial. 
Therefore,  we  don't  need  to  listen  to  these  calculations." 

The  bottom  line  was,  the  thing  was  going  to  be  contained,  but 
it  was  going  to  be  contained  with  the  potential  for  a  hydrofracture 
going  much  higher  in  the  section  that  we  had  ever  hypothesized 
before  from  a  tamped  event.  I  emphasize  tamped  event,  rather  than 
a  cavity  event. 


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Based  on  drilling  rates  John  knew  there  was  something  funny, 
and  what  was  funny  was,  you  had  this  strong  material  right  above  the 
shot,  which  kept  the  cavity  size  small,  and  therefore  kept  the  cavity 
pressure  up.  Above  that  material  was  a  layer  of  weaker  material 
which  wouldn't  support  a  high  residual  stress.  So  you  had  high 
cavity  pressure,  and  low  strength  rock  above.  That's  the  worse 
possible  case  you  could  have,  other  than  an  open  fracture  leading 
to  the  surface.  The  empiricist  said,  "Why  should  this  matter?" 
Well,  when  itwas  shot,  radiation  got  very  quickly  up  to  the  last  plug. 

Carothers:  Higher  than  we've  ever  seen  it  on  a  shot  of  that 
yield. 

Rimer:  And  you  know  what?  It  wasn't  a  coincidence.  Geology 
mattered. 

Brownlee:  I  think  what  I've  learned  is  that  the  geology  is 
only  important  when  I'm  on  the  edge.  Then  it  becomes  important. 
But  if  I've  got  normal  margins  of  safety,  the  geology  can  be  almost 
anything.  I  know  that's  true,  because  we've  shot  in  almost  any 
geology,  safely.  If  you've  done  your  containment  right,  you  don't 
have  to  hang  on  the  geology  to  determine  what  happens.  But  if 
you've  done  things  wrong,  a  trivial  thing  in  the  geology  can  make 
all  the  difference. 

Now,  don't  misunderstand  me  —  I  justbelieve  thatwe  ought 
to  be  so  conservative  that  geology  never  matters,  and  most  of  the 
time  that's  true.  We  are  so  conservative  that  the  geology  doesn't 
matter.  And  so,  I  get  very  bored  when  they  go  into  details  that  are 
of  no  importance  to  this  shot;  none  whatsoever.  But  they  go  into 
it  because  after  all,  they've  done  this  work,  and  they've  got  this 
geologic  business  to  talk  about.  Well,  they  don't  understand  why 
it  isn't  important,  and  there's  no  way  I  can  teach  it  to  them.  They 
have  to  learn  it  themselves. 

Orkild:  Many  times,  I  agree  that  you  could  ignore  all  the 
geology;  many,  many  times  the  geology  is  benign.  That  is,  you  have 
flat  beds,  you  have  low  water  content,  you  have  good  porous  rock. 
There  is  no  nearby  structure  that  would  affect  the  containment. 
And,  a  rock  type  where  we  have  a  good  handle  on  the  physical 
properties,  and  they  are  well  within  the  range  that  we  are  familiar 
with.  And  the  water  content,  the  same  thing;  it's  within  a  range  that 
we  know  for  this  particular  lithologic  unit  that's  being  tested  in. 
And  that  there's  no  large  body  of  clay  at  the  working  point. 


136 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  We've  never  seen  a  large  body  of  clay,  except  for 
the  Baneberry  site,  have  we? 

Orkild:  There  was  the  site  for  the  Stutz  event  that  had  a  pretty 
large  volume  of  clay.  1  think  there  has  to  be  a  particular  set  of 
circumstances  to  get  a  big  pod  of  clay.  On  Baneberry  there  was 
opportunity  for  a  large  amount  of  water  moving  through  the 
formation,  and  the  right  lithology  that  could  alter,  and  a  thick  zone. 
You've  got  to  have  water,  and  you've  got  to  have  a  vitric  tuff  that 
will  readily  turn  to  clay,  and  the  right  chemical  conditions  to  start 
the  process. 

We've  seen  that  situation  twice.  I  don't  think  that  any  other 
time  we  have  drilled  into  a  situation  like  that.  Normally  the  clay  we 
see  is  at  the  interface  between  two  units,  which  is  stratigraphic,  and 
very,  very  thin.  Theoretically,  in  a  long  strike  it  could  get  thicker, 
but  not  more  than  ten  feet  or  so. 

Carothers:  On  Baneberry  that  clay  was  what,  a  few  hundred 
feet  thick? 

Orkild:  Yes.  It  would  be  very  nice  if  we  could  excavate  that  and 
see  what  it  really  looked  like.  We've  looked  on  outcrops  and  looked 
for  situations  like  that.  Where  would  you  go  to  look,  to  see  if  you 
could  find  a  situation  like  that?  There  should  be  an  analogue  at  the 
surface  somewhere.  The  closest  we  could  find  to  something  like  that 
was  in  what  they  call  a  chinle  formation  on  the  Colorado  plateau, 
That  was  essentially  volcanic  ash  that  was  deposited  in  a  shallow 
ocean  or  pond,  and  altered.  It's  hundreds  of  feet  thick.  But  we 
never  have  we  seen  anything  like  that  on  the  Test  Site. 

Carothers:  With  data  from  the  hundreds  of  drill  holes  that  are 
on  the  Test  Site  you  must  be  able  to  plot  everything  everywhere, 
from  hole  to  hole. 

Orkild:  Yes,  we  have  2-D  and  3-D  programs  where  we  can  do 
that.  We  call  up  the  data  base  and  plot  the  holes.  That's  how  we 
do  the  siting.  The  program  looks  at  a  site  and  plots  the  geology,  the 
water  table,  the  lithologic  units,  and  plots  in  the  known  faults,  and 
their  distance. 

The  Laboratory  people  come  in  with  a  set  of  coordinates,  and 
the  parameters  for  the  hole.  We  plug  that  into  the  program  and 
crank  out  what  they  call  a  prediction  report.  And  then  we  do  the 


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same  thing  with  the  gravity.  We  show  what  the  configuration  of  the 
Paleozoic  surface  will  be,  and  send  it  on  to  the  Labs.  That  eventually 
gets  incorporated  into  the  prospectus  and  the  presentation. 

Sometimes  we  reach  a  point  where  we  do  not  agree.  Or  we 
might  point  out  certain  problems,  like  a  lava  mass  being  close  to  the 
site.  We  went  through  one  of  those  in  Area  20,  where  the  two 
exploratory  holes  drilled  did  confirm  there  was  a  blob  out  there.  It 
turned  out  that  it  wasn't  really  any  problem,  because  it  turned  out 
to  be  far  enough  away. 

Of  course,  as  the  hole  is  drilled  you  develop  more  data.  It's 
an  ongoing  process.  Now,  I  think,  they've  gone  overboard,  and 
collect  data  that  nobody  seems  to  understand.  Especially  water 
content.  We  here  still  think  something's  fishy  between  the  results 
of  the  two  water  content  logs  -  -  the  epithermal  neutron  logs  that 
Livermore  is  showing  these  days,  and  the  one  they  used  to  show. 

Carothers:  Why? 

Orkild:  It  has  to  do  with  the  bound  water.  It's  hard  to  tell 
which  standard  to  use,  because  the  Lab  seems  to  pick  the  one  that 
fits  best.  Which  is  okay,  I  guess,  but  that  really  doesn't  solve  the 
problem  of  understanding  why  you  have  this  bound  water  and 
additional  water.  The  water  contents  on  Pahute  are  up  what  —  ten 
percent  more?  —  than  we  ever  used  in  the  projections.  On  some 
of  the  recent  shots  where  they're  using  the  new  logs,  the  water 
contents  are  up  in  the  twenty's  —  twenty-five  percent,  twenty-four 
percent.  Which  might  be  real,  but  we  really  don't  know.  This  is  one 
of  the  outgrowths  of  all  the  data  gathering  that's  been  going  on. 

Carothers:  These  new  numbers  are  coming  from  the  neutron 
log  aren't  they? 

Orkild:  Yes,  and  I  think  it's  a  positive  step.  But  I  think  it's 
going  to  take  a  lot  more  work  before  they  really  understand  it,  and 
everybody  agrees  with  it.  Of  course,  getting  everybody  to  agree  will 
probably  never  happen,  but  you  could  certainly  get  to  where  a 
majority  agreed. 


1 3  8  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Hydrology 

Fenske:  Hazelton  Nuclear  Science  Corporation  got  a  contract 
to  do  hydrologic  studies  on  the  Test  Site  in  1 962.  Hazelton  had  two 
labs  for  work  with  radioisotopes;  a  pretty  high  level  lab,  and  a  low 
level  one.  They  they  were  doing  all  kinds  of  things  for  the  Atomic 
Energy  Commission,  and  the  National  Institute  of  Health,  and 
people  like  that  who  were  interested  in  radioactivity.  They  were 
hiring  people,  and  in  about  1965  I  went  to  work  for  them.  The 
program  was  to  find  out  whether  underground  testing  was  going  to 
contaminate  ground  water  in  such  a  way  that  it  would  cause  a  serious 
problem.  I  don't  recall  what  a  "serious  problem"  would  have  been 
at  that  time,  but  I  think  it  came  out  that  it  would  be  if  any 
radioactivity  would  leave  the  Test  Site. 

Where  was  the  water  going  to  go?  Nobody  really  knew  very 
much  about  the  transport  of  radioactivity  in  ground  water,  and  not 
too  much  was  known  about  hydrology,  in  that  sense.  At  that  time 
hydrology  was  centered  around  how  much  water  could  be  produced 
from  a  well.  So,  hydrology  was  drilling  a  hole  into  an  aquifer,  and 
producing  water  so  you  could  water  the  livestock,  or  irrigate  the 
field,  or  something  like  that.  That  was  the  hydrology  the  USGS  was 
steeped  in  at  that  time.  It  was  always  drilling  holes  and  finding  out 
how  much  water  could  be  produced. 

To  do  that,  in  the  final  analysis  what  you  really  do  is  pump  on 
the  well.  In  a  nice  isotropic,  homogeneous  medium  the  production 
is  an  exponentially  decreasing  curve.  You  plot  it  on  semi-log  paper, 
and  it's  a  straight  line.  When  the  line  comes  out  so  many  years  in 
the  future  going  to  zero  production,  you  know  that's  it  -  -  that's  the 
end  of  that  well,  probably.  Of  course  that  assumes  things  are 
isotropic  and  homogeneous  and  all  those  nice  things.  Which  they 
never  are,  but  that's  about  as  good  as  you  can  do.  The  longer  you 
run  the  pumping  test  the  more  confidence  you  have  in  the  results, 
but,  as  on  some  of  the  wells  at  the  Test  Site  that  the  USGS  tested, 
you  can  find  that  the  slope  of  the  curve  changes.  It  goes  along 
nicely,  and  all  of  a  sudden  it  starts  diving.  It  has  what  they  call  a 
boundary  effect. 

So,  hydrology  was  a  developing  field,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  transport  of  water  for  a  long  distance.  It  started  out  with  the  idea 
that  there  is  an  aquifer,  there's  a  gradient  in  the  aquifer,  and 
therefore  the  water  is  moving  down  the  gradient  at  a  certain  rate. 


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Essentially  you  drill  a  couple  of  holes,  and  if  the  water  comes  up  to 
a  certain  level  in  one  hole,  and  comes  up  to  a  lower  level  in  another, 
you  figure  there's  a  hydraulic  gradient  in  that  direction.  Early  on, 
people  tried  to  figure  what  the  hydraulic  gradient  was,  and  what  the 
direction  was,  and  what  the  permeability  was  so  they  could  say, 
"This  contamination  is  going  to  go  in  that  direction,  and  will  travel 
this  far  in  so  many  years." 

As  things  progressed,  people  realized  that  the  hydrology  in  an 
area  wasn't  that  simple.  The  Test  Site  is  not  at  all  simple;  it  has  a 
very  complex  hydrology,  and  we  still  don't  know  much  about  it, 
really.  And,  radionuclides  are  adsorbed  on  rocks.  Then  we  found 
out  that  the  process  isn't  really  symmetrical;  they  weren't  desorbed 
at  the  same  rate  they  were  adsorbed,  and  things  like  that.  Ail  kinds 
of  problems  like  that  occurred,  but  it  didn't  change  the  basic 
conclusion.  That  was,  except  for  the  tritium,  the  radionuclides  just 
weren't  moving  very  much.  At  least  that  was  so  for  the  rocks  we 
were  dealing  with. 

Now,  the  carbonate  aquifers  are  different,  because  things  like 
strontium  and  calcium  are  ionically  similar,  and  strontium  will  move 
in  the  carbonate  aquifers.  In  the  alluvium  you  just  didn't  find  any 
real  movement  of  that  material.  In  alluvium  we  never  have  found 
movement,  except  for  the  tritium,  which  moves  as  fast  as,  or  maybe 
faster  than  the  average  velocity  of  the  ground  water. 

Carothers:  How  can  something  in  the  water  move  faster  than 
the  average  velocity  of  the  water? 

Fenske:  Well,  you  try  to  calculate  the  velocity  of  the  water  on 
the  basis  of  the  pore  structure  and  the  permeability,  which  are  the 
two  things  you  have  to  have  to  get  the  velocity  of  the  water.  That’s 
an  average  value  for  the  movement  of  the  water  in  the  aquifer. 
Now,  that  aquifer  extends  over  a  broad  region,  and  there  may  be 
localized  regions  where  the  pore  structure  is  different  from  the  the 
one  you  used  to  calculate  the  average  velocity.  An  old,  buried 
stream  bed,  for  example.  If  you  happen  to  drill  into  that  when  you 
are  measuring  the  movement  of  the  tritium,  you  might  find  a  faster 
velocity  than  you  have  calculated  as  an  average.  So,  it's  not  that 
easy.  The  velocity  of  diffusion  depends  on  pore  size,  and  the  pores 
can  be  of  different  sizes  in  different  places,  so  it  gets  to  be  complex. 


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CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  One  of  the  things  I  have  heard  about  the  Test  Site, 
which  is  said  to  be  unusual,  is  that  the  water  table  is  very  deep,  that 
there  are  very  few  places  where  you  will  have  to  go  down  1 600  feet 
before  you  get  to  the  water.  Is  that  true? 

Fenske:  Well,  if  you're  talking  about  Yucca  Valley,  yes.  If 
you're  talking  about  Pahute  Mesa,  no.  On  Pahute  the  water  is  pretty 
far  down,  but  very  often  in  regions  at  higher  elevations  you  will  find 
deeper  water.  In  lower  regions,  like  Yucca  Valley,  you  find 
shallower  water.  In  fact,  a  lot  of  valleys  in  Nevada  have  swampy 
areas  in  them.  Ruby  Marshes  is  a  good  example.  Or  they  have 
springs;  Hot  Creek  Valley  has  springs.  That  would  be  the  normal 
situation.  But  in  Yucca  Valley  it's  different. 

I  had  one  of  the  fellows  at  DRI,  a  number  of  years  ago,  draw 
a  map  of  the  elevation  of  the  water  in  all  of  the  valley  bottoms  in 
Nevada.  The  reason  for  this  was  because  I  felt  if  I  had  the  elevation 
of  the  water  in  all  the  valley  bottoms  I  would  have  an  idea  of  what 
the  regional  flow  structure  looked  like  in  Nevada.  Well,  you  find 
everything  is  very  regular,  and  it  all  moves  down  towards  Death 
Valley  —  until  it  hits  the  Test  Site,  where  Yucca  Valley  is.  Then, 
there  are  very  steep  gradients  going  into  Yucca  Valley.  There's 
something  else  going  on;  Yucca  Valley  is  underlain  in  many  areas  by 
the  carbonate  rocks,  which  are  fractured,  and  transmissive  of  water. 

Another  thing  you  have  in  Yucca  is  that  the  alluvium  has  a 
higher  water  saturation,  higher  in  the  section,  than  you  would 
expect  in  a  dry  valley.  All  the  way  to  the  surface  you  have  some 
water  saturations  that  are  higher  than  you  normally  would  expect. 
In  some  places  you  find  20,  30,  40  percent  water  saturations;  much 
higher  than  you  would  expect  to  see  if  the  water  was  always  down 
at  the  level  where  it  is  now.  The  impression  you  get  is  that  at  one 
time  the  water  was  up  near  the  surface,  but  now  it  isn't  any  more. 

What  I  think  has  happened  is  that  the  carbonates  which 
underlie  the  valley  have  acted  as  a  huge  drain.  So,  the  water  is 
basically  moving  down  to  the  carbonate,  and  out  to  the  springs  in 
Amargossa.  The  water  in  all  the  rest  of  the  Nevada  area  is  moving 
in  sort  of  a  normal  fashion;  in  Yucca  it's  beingdrained,  and  has  been 
drained,  so  it's  not  up  near  the  surface  anymore.  It's  down  closer 
to  the  level  of  the  water  in  the  Amargossa. 


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If  you  look  at  the  vertical  gradients  in  the  carbonate,  they  are 
much  less  than  the  vertical  gradients  in  the  alluvium,  so  the  normal 
direction  of  movement  would  be  downward  through  the  alluvium 
into  the  carbonates  in  the  Yucca  valley.  Then  the  water  moves  south 
through  Frenchman  out  to  the  springs  in  the  Amargossa  Desert. 

Some  of  the  water  beneath  Pahute  may  be  draining  into  Yucca, 
but  whether  it  is  or  not  is  the  subject  of  some  argument.  The  Survey, 
which  has  done  most  of  the  work  on  that,  think  that  the  Eleana 
formation,  which  comes  along  the  side  of  Yucca  Valley,  on  the  east 
side  of  Pahute,  is  a  pretty  effective  barrier  to  movement  into  Yucca 
Flat.  Everything  that  comes  off  the  west  side  of  Pahute  Mesa  goes 
down  underneath  Forty  Mile  Canyon  toward  Lathrop  Wells.  So,  not 
much  of  any  water  gets  into  Yucca  from  Pahute.  Some  probably 
does,  but  I  think  it  would  be  small. 

I  don't  think  there's  any  recharge  at  all  in  Yucca.  We  ran  an 
investigation  there  once  where  we  looked  at  tritium  in  the  dirt.  It's 
pretty  dry  dirt,  and  it's  pretty  hard  to  dig  it.  I  guess  about  the 
farthest  they  could  reach  was  about  as  far  as  you  could  reach  with 
your  hand  to  grab  a  handful  of  dirt.  We  found  that  the  amount  of 
tritium  pretty  well  decreased  with  depth,  so  there  doesn't  appear  to 
have  been  any  recent  recharge  there.  By  the  time  you  got  down 
about  a  meter  you  just  didn't  find  any  tritium  any  more,  in  the  dirt. 
There  was  a  lot  of  tritium  in  the  rain  in  the  sixties  from  the 
atmospheric  tests;  there  was  a  peak  during  those  years.  You  don't 
find  that  at  depth  when  you  look  at  it  in  Yucca  valley,  or  on  the 
slopes  around  the  valley.  So,  I  don't  think  there's  much  recharge 
going  on  there.  I  don't  think  it's  going  from  the  surface  of  the  valley 
down  2000  feet. 

Now,  it  may  reach  an  equilibrium  point  where  the  gradient 
around  the  sides  of  the  valley  is  increased  enough  to  replenish  the 
water  about  as  fast  as  it's  running  out.  There  are  steep  gradients 
going  down  into  the  valley,  and  the  lower  you  make  the  water,  the 
steeper  those  gradients  get,  and  the  more  water  you  bring  into  the 
valley  from  the  sides.  It  may  have  reached  an  equilibrium  point,  but 
I  don't  know  if  it  has  or  not.  You'd  have  to  watch  for  a  long  time, 
a  hundred  years,  or  two  hundred  years,  to  be  able  to  tell. 

Carothers:  A  few  years  ago,  in  the  LANL  area,  radioactivity 
was  found  when  they  were  drilling  an  emplacement  hole.  There  was 
the  thought  that  perhaps  this  activity  had  been  transported  from  the 


142 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


expended  Sandreef  or  Aleman  sites,  to  the  north.  If  that  was  so,  it 
had  traveled  laterally  a  lot  further  than  people  had  expected.  What 
do  you  think  accounted  for  the  transport  that  was  observed?  It  did 
happen. 

Fenske:  Yes,  it  did.  There  are  a  lot  of  things  we  can't  explain 
that  we  see  once  in  a  while.  The  only  thing  I  can  think  is  that  there 
was  pressure  in  the  cavity,  apd  material  was  driven  down  a  fracture 
that  momentarily  opened  up.  As  I  recall,  there  were  some 
radionuclides  out  there  that  had  gaseous  precursors,  and  they 
wouldn't  have  gotten  that  far  if  they  hadn't  been  shoved  over  by  a 
pulse  of  gas,  or  something  like  that. 

Generally,  the  water  above  the  carbonates,  in  the  allluvium  and 
the  tuffs,  drains  down.  It  is  when  it  gets  into  the  common  aquifer 
that  it  drains  to  the  south.  I  would  think  that  the  amount  of  lateral 
transport,  above  the  carbonates,  is  pretty  small.  That  doesn't  mean 
there  can't  be  some,  but  I  think  it's  pretty  small. 

Carothers:  On  another  subject,  what  is  perched  water? 

Fenske:  Well,  it's  something  that  you  may  well  have  in  Yucca 
valley,  if  once  you  had  a  higher  water  table  and  now  you  have  a 
lower  water  table.  Say  that  a  thousand  years  ago  you  had  a  water 
table  close  to  the  surface.  If  that  water  table  drops,  there  will  be 
water  left  in  various  places  —  on  top  of  layers  of  less  permeable 
material,  for  instance.  That  water  is  just  sitting  up  there  —  perched 
up  there.  It  is  not  like  a  lake;  it's  just  a  more  saturated  region  of  the 
rocks. 

In  the  conventional  sense  of  perched  water,  you'd  be  in  a  more 
humid  region  than  the  NTS,  and  you'd  have  a  water  table  at  some 
level.  The  water  that's  deposited  on  the  surface  infiltrates  down. 
But,  there  may  be  some  fairly  shallow  little  clay  lenses.  So,  some 
of  that  water  sits  on  top  of  these  clay  lenses.  Then  it  runs  off  the 
edges,  and  down  to  the  water  table,  but  there's  a  time  delay.  In  that 
situation,  given  a  certain  amount  of  rainfall  on  the  average,  there's 
always  a  lens  of  water  that's  perched  up  there  on  top  of  this  clay 
lens.  It's  in  equilibration  between  the  amount  of  water  that's 
running  off  the  edges  of  the  lens,  and  the  amount  of  rainfall  that 
deposited. 


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Carothers:  Perched  water  was  one  of  the  things  that  was 
discussed  in  the  first  report  about  what  happened  on  Baneberry. 
The  impression  was  given  that  the  explosion  cracked  a  rock  layer, 
and  a  lot  of  water  ran  into  the  cavity.  In  the  situation  you  describe, 
that  couldn't  happen. 

Fenske:  No,  it  couldn't.  At  least  not  rapidly,  not  in  minutes. 
It  might  do  it  in  months,  or  years,  or  decades,  or  something  like 
that,  depending  on  the  permeabilities  of  the  materials. 

Carothers:  What  about  "water  mounds,"  that  are  thought  to  be 
produced  by  nuclear  detonations? 

Fenske:  You  will  get  Fenske's  version,  which  is  that  I  don't 
really  believe  in  water  mounds.  I  do  believe  in  potential  mounds. 
What  I  mean  by  that  is,  in  material  which  has  a  low  permeability, 
such  as  the  alluvium,  the  water  maybe  moves  ten  feet  a  year  when 
it's  moving  laterally.  1  don't  think  that,  instantaneously,  you  can 
move  huge  volumes  of  water  up  meters  in  height  over  big  areas.  I 
think  that  what  happens  is  that  the  relationship  between  grain 
pressure  and  pore  pressure  is  changed. 

Say  you  drill  a  hole  down  into  the  formation,  and  measure  the 
water  level.  After  the  shot  you  have  a  higher  pore  pressure  there 
than  you  had  before;  so  the  water  comes  up  to  equalize  that  pore 
pressure.  And  so,  every  place  you  drill  a  hole  you  have  water 
coming  up  to  higher  levels  than  it  did  before  the  shot.  You  can  say 
you  have  a  water  mound  there,  but  it's  not  the  water  that's  a  mound 
—  it's  a  potential  mound.  What  you  are  really  measuring  is  the 
potential  of  water  in  that  formation  at  that  point.  Now,  the  water's 
flowing,  because  of  the  gradients  and  the  higher  potentials,  from 
one  place  to  another.  But  it's  not  a  real  mound  of  water.  The  holes 
you  are  drilling  are  really  acting  as  piezometers;  they're  measuring 
the  water  pressure  at  that  point,  which  is  higher  than  you  would 
consider  at  that  depth,  or  higher  than  it  was  before.  There  really 
isn't  any  more  water  there  than  there  was  before.  It's  just  that  the 
pressure,  in  the  water,  is  higher  than  it  was  before  the  shot,  so  the 
water  just  comes  up  higher  in  the  piezometer  tube  that  you  have  put 
in  there.  And  that's  because,  in  shaking  the  ground,  you  have 
transferred  the  grain  pressure  to  pore  pressure. 

The  material  is  originally  in  an  equilibrium  situation,  where  all 
the  sand  grains  are  impinging  on  one  another,  and  they  hold  the 
pores  open  to  a  certain  degree.  If  you  took  all  the  water  out,  there 


1 44  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

would  still  be  some  pores  in  there.  Now,  if  you  shift  the  sand  grains 
a  little  bit,  they  can  go  together  and  reduce  the  porosity.  Then, 
because  you  have  reduced  the  porosity,  there  isn't  the  space  for  the 
water  that  there  was  before,  but  there's  still  the  pressure  of  the 
overlying  rocks.  By  reducing  the  porosity  you  have  increased  the 
pore  pressure,  or  the  water  pressure  in  the  rocks. 

The  same  thing  happens,  incidently,  in  a  landslide.  You  have 
a  water  saturated  material.  A  little  shift  of  the  grains,  for  one  reason 
or  another,  will  start  increasing  the  pore  pressure,  and  decreasing 
the  grain  pressure.  When  you  do  that  you  decrease  the  resistance 
to  flow;  the  material  becomes  liquefied,  and  downhill  it  goes. 
Spontaneous  liquefaction  is  basically  that  kind  of  a  mechanism. 
You've  been  to  the  beach  and  patted  the  sands? 

Carothers:  Sure.  And  water  comes  up  to  the  top. 

Fenske:  Yes.  You're  compacting  the  sand,  and  the  water  comes 
up.  When  you  compact  it,  that  material  becomes  liquified;  it 
becomes  mushy. 

If  you  start  calculating  the  amount  of  water  that  would  have  to 
be  in  a  water  mound,  given  a  reasonable  porosity,  and  how  much 
you  had  to  move  in  a  fairly  short  period  of  time,  that's  a  lot  of  water. 
And  then  you  have  to  ask,  "Where  did  it  come  from?" 

We  have  run  into  situations  where  perched  water  was  a 
consideration,  and  it  has  caused  all  kinds  of  problems.  They  were 
not  necessarily  containment  problems;  they  were  problems  with 
emplacing  the  device,  just  getting  the  thing  down  in  the  hole.  For 
example,  there  have  been  cases  where  the  Labs  have  put  down  a 
liner,  and  the  water  has  come  over  the  top  of  the  liner.  That  has  to 
do  with  hydrology,  and  you  ought  to  understand  more  about  it. 
Sometimes  that's  a  perched  water  problem. 

Carothers:  No  it's  not.  It's  a  stupidity  problem.  They  say, 
"And  the  water  level  was  tagged  at  636  meters.  So,  we've  put  in 
a  liner  whose  top  is  at  636.5  meters."  They  seem  to  think  that  all 
they  need  is  a  liner  that  is  an  inch,  or  a  foot  higher  than  their  tag, 
and  everything  will  be  swell.  And  then  they  say,  "Oh  my  gosh,  the 
water  is  running  over  the  top.  How  distressing."  What  I  think  is, 
"How  expensive  to  fix.  Fire  them." 


The  Nevada  Test  Site  145 

Fenske:  Well,  there  are  other  cases  where  water  has  run  over 
the  top  for  other  reasons.  There  is  the  possibility  that  there  really 
is  perched  water.  When  you  go  through  a  zone  where  there  is  water, 
and  it's  not  all  necessarily  held  in  by  capillarity,  it  can  run  out.  And 
there  are  cases  where  there  is  excess  pressure  in  the  water,  as  in  the 
ground  water  mound.  There  was  one  shot  where  the  water  pressure 
was  high  enough  to  collapse  the  casing,  due  to  ground  water 
mounding,  or  the  pressure  in  the  water,  as  I  think  of  it. 

Carothers:  So,  suppose  I  am  drilling  down  through  the  allu¬ 
vium,  and  the  tuffs,  and  it's  dry.  I  am  careful  to  stay  above  the 
standing  water  level,  but  I  notice  water  running  into  the  hole.  As 
I  understand  it,  that  could  happen  because  there's  perched  water, 
or  as  you  would  say  it,  there's  a  high  pressure  zone.  If  I  case  that 
hole,  the  casing  has  to  be  able  to  withstand  a  pressure  that  is  at  least 
equal  to  whatever  the  pore  pressure  of  that  water  is.  If  it  can't  do 
that,  it  could  collapse,  even  though  that  casing  is  above  the  standing 
water  level. 

Fenske:  Yes.  There's  another  way  you  could  have  perched 
water,  and  at  the  Test  Site  it  would  be  water  running  into  the  valley. 
If  you  happen  to  have  a  tongue  of  something  like  clay,  that's  lower 
permeability,  which  extends  into  the  Valley,  water  may  run  along 
the  top  of  it  rather  than  run  down  to  the  water  table.  It  may  run 
along  the  top,  and  then  drip  over  the  edge.  Up  to  that  point  you 
may  have  perched  water.  Around  the  valley  sides,  more  than 
around  the  center,  you  could  possibly  have  perched  water.  You 
have  a  source  that  keeps  on  running,  because  it's  recharge  water 
from,  let's  say,  Pahute  Mesa  that's  coming  through  the  system.  It's 
just  taking  a  little  different  path.  A  good  example  of  that  is  some 
of  the  springs  that  you  see.  They're  basically  perched  water.  Water 
enters  the  system,  flows  down  some  impermeable  layer,  and  comes 
out  in  the  form  of  a  spring  where  the  layer  intersects  the  surface. 

Carothers:  Do  you  think  we've  made  any  difference  to  the  flow 
of  the  water,  or  the  drainage  of  the  water?  Have  we  upset  the 
hydrology  of  the  valley? 

Fenske:  I  don't  think  so,  except  locally,  around  the  cavity,  and 
for  some  small  distance  out  from  that.  I  looked  at  one  thing  though, 
at  one  time,  which  was  the  number  of  uncased  bore  holes  that  went 


1 46  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

into  the  Paleozoics.  There  turned  out  to  be  a  fairly  large  number. 
At  some  level  those  holes  enhance  the  flow  of  water  from  the 
alluvium  down  into  the  carbonates.  Of  course,  you  have  to  start 
with  how  much  water  is  leaking  through  there,  without  the  holes,  to 
see  what  that  enhancement  might  be,  and  we  don't  know  that. 


147 


6 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 

The  geologic  materials  in  which  a  device  is  detonated  deter¬ 
mine  the  details  of  the  phenomenology  that  occurs.  Hence,  the 
properties  of  these  materials  are  required  as  input  for  any  of  the 
codes  used  to  calculate  the  expected  cavity  size,  hydrofractures  that 
may  occur,  the  various  stresses  that  occur,  the  ground  motions,  and 
so  on.  Unfortunately,  many  difficulties  beset  the  determination  of 
these  properties. 

In  emplacement  holes  there  is  no  access  to  the  materials,  or 
to  information  about  the  geologic  materials  around  the  shot  point, 
other  than  that  provided  by  logging  tools,  or  various  tools  which  can 
retrieve  small  samples.  In  the  tunnels  samples  can  be  taken  fairly 
readily,  and  laboratory  measurements  can  be  made  on  them  to 
determine  various  quantities  such  as  density,  porosity,  and  water 
content.  However,  such  laboratory  measurements  cover  only  a 
small  range  of  the  conditions  the  material  is  subjected  to  near  the 
detonation,  and  tell  nothing  of  how  the  material  will  respond  to  a 
shock  pressure  of  500  kilobars,  for  example,  or  to  simultaneous 
radial  and  tangential  stresses. 

Laboratory  measurements  are  made  on  small,  competent 
samples  of  rock,  while  the  energy  of  the  detonation  interacts  with 
the  entire  mass  of  the  surrounding  earth,  which  can  include  frac¬ 
tures,  faults,  and  layers  of  different  materials  of  different  composi¬ 
tion  and  properties.  The  behavior  of  the  overall  surrounding  mate¬ 
rials  may  be  quite  different  from  what  would  be  expected  from  the 
the  properites  of  a  small  laboratory  sample. 

Rocks  that  have  been  subjected  to  the  high  shock  pressures 
generated  by  the  energy  released  in  the  detonation  can  be  damaged, 
to  various  degrees,  depending  on  the  shock  pressure,  and  their 
properties  are  not  the  same  after  the  shock  wave  has  passed  as  they 
were  before.  Therefore,  they  do  not  respond  as  they  did  before,  but 
things  important  to  containment  are  still  occurring. 

There  is  not  agreement  among  those  working  in  the  field  of 
containment  as  to  what  the  properties  important  to  containment  are. 


148 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Los  Alamos  had  drilled  some  holes  during  the 
moratorium,  and  after  the  resumption  of  testing  in  1961  that 
activity  picked  up  considerably.  What  sort  of  logging  did  you  do, 
or  what  kind  of  geologic  information  did  you  look  for?  Or  did  it  just 
accumulate  peripherally  to  the  actual  drilling? 

Brownlee:  Well,  I  hate  to  go  on  record  as  saying  this,  but  when 
I  was  dealing  with  the  engineers  those  kinds  of  questions  had  nothing 
to  do  with  it  at  all.  They  picked  the  sites,  and  told  us  there  was  a 
hole  there.  We  could  ask  whatever  questions  we  chose  about  it,  but 
they  were  not  obligated  to  tell  us  anything.  The  truth  is,  they  didn't 
know  anything  about  the  site. 

Carothers:  If  you  asked,  "What  are  the  rocks  like  at  the  bottom 
of  the  hole?"  Or  "What  sort  of  layers  of  rock  have  you  drilled 
through?" 

Brownlee:  No  answer.  Now,  they  very  well  may  have  had 
some  information,  but  they  certainly  didn't  feel  obligated  to  share 
it  with  a  non-engineer.  The  one  fact  they  acknowledged  was  that  it 
was  possible  to  hit  water.  And  so,  I  usually  knew  if  we  had  gotten 
to  the  water  table. 

I  knew  the  depth,  of  course.  And  if  they  were  in  tuff,  they 
would  tell  me  that  as  opposed  to  being  in  alluvium.  But  I  didn't 
know  much  about  tuff,  because  the  alluvium  in  Area  3  is  very  deep. 
So,  tuff  was  not  a  common  kind  of  occurrence  until  we  got  toward 
the  edge  of  the  valley. 

But  logging  was  not  a  requirement.  The  only  requirement  was 
to  drill  a  straight  hole,  and  so  they  did  a  lot  of  worrying  about  not 
drilling  crooked  holes.  All  the  emphasis  was  on  the  mechanics,  on 
the  engineering  aspects  of  the  drilling.  That's  the  way  I  remember 
it. 

I  finally  derived  four  standard  materials,  based  on  how  close  I 
was  to  the  water  table.  I  had  very  dry,  dry,  wet  and  very  wet.  The 
very  dry  was  for  the  top  of  the  alluvium  in  Area  3,  and  the  very  wet 
was  at  the  water  table.  And,  I  had  a  couple  of  other  standard  curves. 
So,  I  found  that  the  equations  of  state  were  some  strange  function 
of  depth,  but  it  wasn't  depth  from  the  surface,  it  was  really  distance 
from  the  water  table. 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


149 


So,  the  question  I  would  ask  was,  "Where  is  the  water  table?" 
And  Rae  Blossom  would  fume  and  say,  "You  don't  have  to  know 
that.  There's  no  reason  why  we  should  spend  a  dollar  to  find  out 
where  the  water  table  is.  Just  knock  it  off.  What  difference  does 
it  make  to  you  anyway?  We  tagged  the  water  table  at  such  and  such 
a  depth  over  there,  so  that  is  what  it  is.  How  could  it  be  any  different 
here?"  And  so,  my  questions  always  ended  in  big  arguments  about 
non-relevant  things  like  budgets,  and  time,  and  money,  and  "You're 
bothering  the  engineers.  Get  the  hell  out  of  here." 

I'd  go  have  these  terrible  arguments  with  Rae,  and  shout  and 
wave  my  arms,  and  we  were  enemies  forever,  and  then  Rae  would 
go  out  and  get  the  answer  to  my  question  because  he  would 
recognize  I  really  was  serious.  You  see,  if  you  didn't  persevere,  you 
weren't  serious.  But  if  you  persevered,  he'd  go  get  the  information 
you  wanted.  So,  I  have  to  admit  that  on  a  number  of  occasions  Rae 
did  make  an  attempt  to  get  answers  to  some  of  my  questions.  He 
was  in  a  position  where  he  could  order  the  rest  of  them  to  do  it,  but 
it  was  always  like  pulling  teeth  to  get  that  done. 

So,  I'm  afraid  that  in  those  very  earliest  times  we  knew  next  to 
nothing  about  the  medium  or  its  properties  after  the  hole  was 
drilled.  The  guys  who  drilled  would  record  that  the  drilling  rate 
changed,  but  you  didn't  know  why.  I  only  found  out  about  some 
of  these  things  when  we  were  actually  doing  the  tests.  Livermore 
did  a  better  job  than  we,  because  when  they  were  doing  the  tunnels 
they  were  asking  the  right  kinds  of  questions.  I  did  get  permission 
to  go  out  and  see  what  was  there,  and  I  was  educated  more  by 
Livermore  guys  than  by  people  here,  in  the  very  earliest  times. 

Carothers:  Pre-Baneberry  there  was,  apparently,  no  real 
requirement  at  Los  Alamos  to  take  logs  and  samples. 

Scolman:  I  don't  recall  that  there  was.  My  feeling  is  that  to 
the  extent  that  there  was  logging  done,  or  we  studied  the  lithology 
of  the  hole,  it  had  to  do  mostly  with  drilling.  How  do  you  best  drill 
it?  Anything  that  came  out  in  terms  of  geologic  information  was 
almost  incidental  to  that  procedure.  We  did  run  some  logs.  We  ran 
caliper  logs,  for  example. 

Carothers:  Because  you  wanted  to  put  the  casing  down  the 
hole,  and  you  wanted  to  know  how  much  cement  you  would  need. 


1 50  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Scolman:  Exactly.  Because  you  had  to  put  the  casing  down, 
And,  of  course,  we  ran  cement  logs,  so  we  could  say,  "Yes,  it  is 
cemented."  We  calculated  how  much  cement  we  should  have  put 
in  and  then  made  sure  that  it  was  reasonable  with  regard  to  that. 

Carothers:  What  attention  did  the  Livermore  people  pay  to  the 
medium  the  event  was  in? 

Olsen:  That  really  didn't  come  until  Baneberry.  There  were 
some  of  us  in  the  containment  group,  in  '69  and  '70,  who  started 
to  appreciate  some  things.  In  particular,  what  we  looked  at  was 
C02  content,  because  there  was  a  shot  that  conventional  wisdom 
said,  at  that  time,  was  deep  enough,  and  had  enough  yield  that  it 
shouldn't  have  leaked,  but  it  did.  That  was  Nash.  Well,  the  obvious 
thing  about  Nash  was  that  it  was  in  high  carbonate  rock.  As  soon 
as  you  think  about  it,  if  you  make  a  lot  of  C02,  it  doesn't  go  away, 
so  it  just  keeps  pushing.  So,  one  of  the  things  we  started  thinking 
about  early,  when  there  came  some  sensitivity  about  seeping,  was 
carbonate  content.  We  didn't  go  much  beyond  that,  although  we 
started  to,  until  Baneberry. 

Carothers:  Was  there  any  logging  or  sampling  program  to  look 
at  the  various  media  you  might  be  shooting  in? 

Olsen:  We  did  some.  It  was  not  much.  I  don't  remember  that 
we  did  downhole  sampling.  We  took  cutting  samples,  as  they 
drilled.  One  of  the  problems,  in  that  era,  was  that  there  were  not 
big-hole  logging  tools,  which  are  now  the  standard.  If  you  wanted 
to  do  any  geophysical  logging  you  had  to  drill  a  small  diameter  hole, 
so  there  was  a  lot  more  exploratory  drilling  then  than  there  is  now. 
We  did  take  cores,  and  we  had,  basically,  oil  field  geophysical  tools 
to  measure  density  and  things  like  that.  So,  we  had  some  logs  then, 
and  there  were  a  few  people  who  were  beginning  to  look  at  those 
things.  The  cratering  people,  who  were  still  in  business  at  the  time, 
were  interested  in  knowing  densities  and  things  like  that  as  input  to 
their  computational  models,  but  they  weren't  interested  in 
containment,  obviously,  if  they  were  interested  in  blowing  a  crater. 

One  way  to  determine  something  about  the  material  properties 
in  the  emplacement  holes  is  to  obtain  samples  of  the  rocks  at  various 
depths,  and  to  do  various  tests  on  them,  in  the  laboratory.  Such 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


151 


samples  may  or  may  not  be  representative  of  the  actual  material,  but 
they  are  a  start.  Obtaining  such  samples  is  not  an  easy,  nor 
inexpensive  matter,  as  the  drillers  see  it. 

Miller:  One  thing  I'd  like  to  tell  you  is  about  all  the  sampling 
deals  that  came  up  after  Baneberry.  I  was  thinking  about  that  when 
you  called  and  said  you  would  like  to  talk  with  me.  I  thought, "I 
wonder  if  he  ever  heard  some  of  my  tirades  about  all  the  sampling 
we  did,  back  then." 

Carothers:  All  the  sampling?  Just  those  few  little  side-wall 
samples  here  and  there,  you  mean? 

Miller:  Yeah,  just  a  few.  In  fact  I  wrote  a  technical  paper  on 
it.  It  was  years  ago  when  they  were  designing  the  tool  to  go  out  and 
take  a  side  wall  core,  not  a  side  wall  sample.  I  said,  "You've  got  to 
find  a  way  of  getting  this  information  with  logs."  And  they  finally 
did.  1  was  happy  about  that,  because  they  caused  us  so  many 
problems  with  that  sampling.  Drilling  the  hole  is  difficult  enough. 

Preshot  measurements  of  material  properties  are  important  in 
the  prediction  of  the  behavior  of  the  surrounding  medium  when  the 
shot  occurs.  Measurements  on  cores  and  samples  taken  after  the 
drilling  of  a  hole,  and  downhole  logging  data  from  emplacement 
holes  provide  some  information.  However,  there  is  not  uniform 
agreement  as  to  the  value,  or  necessity,  of  the  various  kinds  of  data 
that  can,  or  should  be  obtained. 

Carothers:  Bill,  you  chaired  a  committee  to  look  at  various 
material  properties  to  make  recommendations  about  which  ones 
were  important,  or  how  they  should  be  measured. 

Twenhofel:  It  goes  back  to  Baneberry,  when  the  properties  of 
the  medium  had  a  contributory  effect  in  the  release.  So  the  system 
said,  "We've  got  to  have  some  way  to  find  out  what's  down  there. 
And  we  want  to  have  that  in  numbers,  we  want  to  quantify  it." 

There  were  certain  measurements  that  could  be  made  at  that 
time.  You  could  get  samples,  and  you  could  measure  the  water,  the 
grain  density,  the  bulk  density  from  either  samples  or  from  logging 
tools,  and  you  could  measure  the  carbon  dioxide.  Those  measure¬ 
ments  are  relatively  easy  to  make.  They're  cheap,  they're  routine, 
and  they  tell  you  something  about  the  material  down  there.  Then 


152 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


you  can  calculate  other  properties,  some  of  which  may  be  related 
to  containment,  like  gas-filled  porosity.  You  can  do  that,  and  it's 
cheap,  so  you  do  that. 

There  was  a  committee  set  up  at  that  time,  and  then  there  was 
a  report  that  said,  "We  are  now  going  to  collect  these  data,  and 
make  these  measurements.  At  the  very  least,  if  there  are  any  more 
surprises  which  are  likely  to  cause  another  Baneberry,  these  mea¬ 
surements  will  probably  tell  us  about  those  surprises." 

Carothers:  You  make  it  sound  as  though  the  measurement  of 
material  properties  started  along  the  lines  of,  "Well,  we've  got  to 
do  something.  Here  are  some  things  we  can  do,  so  let's  do  those." 

Twenhofel:  Pretty  close.  That's  the  impression  I'm  trying  to 
give.  And  that  wasn't  foolish.  We  were  scared.  And  there  was 
another  thing;  the  physicists  liked  it,  because  they  had  numbers 
now.  And  again  I'm  being  a  little  facetious,  but  not  completely. 

Carothers:  Well,  Bill,  what  is  a  physicist  going  to  do  with 
information  like,  "At  1 326  feet  there  are  fossilized  tree  trunks 
mixed  with  gravel  and  sand."  How  do  you  put  that  into  a  code  to 
calculate  anything? 

Twenhofel:  I  know.  I  realize  that.  But  anyway,  that's  how  it 
got  started.  Then  the  next  thing  that  happened  was  that  some  years 
ago  you  appointed  a  Data  Needs  Subcommittee  for  the  Panel,  and 
I  was  the  Chairman. 

Carothers:  Well,  there  had  been  a  certain  amount  of  grum¬ 
bling,  among  some  Panel  members,  who  would  occasionally  say, 
"Why  are  you  showing  me  all  this?"  And  then  there  was  grumbling 
on  the  part  of  other  people  who  said,  "I  think  it's  absurd  that  you 
show  me  data  that  shows  a  water  content  of  1 00%  and  a  saturation 
of  1 20%.  How  can  there  be  1 20%  saturation?  That  just  tells  me 
you  don't  know  what  you're  doing.  Why  are  you  doing  this?" 

Twenhofel:  Yes.  So,  that  subcommittee  was  appointed,  and 
it's  purpose  was  to  look  at  what  data  was  being  collected  to  see 
whether  there  was  additional  data  that  ought  to  be  collected,  or 
whether  we  could  stop  collecting  some  of  it.  Well,  we  expanded 
that  charter  a  little  bit  to  include,  "What  kind  of  data  ought  to  be 
presented  to  the  CEP."  One  of  our  recommendations  was  that  we 
add  a  section  on  phenomenology,  and  a  section  on  a  discussion  of 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


153 


the  containment  aspects  of  the  event.  So,  I  think  we  made  a  pretty 
good  contribution  in  terms  of  what  data  ought  the  CEP  see,  and  what 
ought  to  be  in  a  containment  package. 

In  my  personal  opinion,  i  think  we  badly  goofed  when  we  failed 
to  eliminate  much  of  the  data  we're  collecting  on  material  proper¬ 
ties.  We  failed  to  do  that.  I  tried,  and  some  other  members  of  the 
Panel  tried,  to  get  some  of  that  data  eliminated,  and  the  Labs  would 
not  stand  still  for  it. 

Carothers:  What,  for  example,  do  you  think  are  some  things 
that  don't  need  to  be  collected? 

Twenhofel:  Grain-density.  Bulk  density.  And  consequent 
calculations  based  on  them.  I  just  don't  think  they  are  directly 
relevant  to  containment.  I  think  that  those  data  do  not  need  to  be 
collected.  I've  always  thought  that. 

Now,  I  think  that  the  electrical  log  is  a  really  valuable  tool 
because  it  tells  you  something  about  whether  the  rock  is  different 
from  the  norm,  whatever  the  norm  is.  There's  a  norm  for  alluvium, 
and  there's  norm  for  tuff.  If  there's  something  different,  when  the 
electric  log  tells  you  that  then  you  can  go  and  look  at  the  samples 
very  carefully  and  see  whether  there  is  a  bunch  of  clay  or  not,  for 
example. 

I  think  we  know  enough  now  about  Yucca  Flat  and  Pahute  Mesa 
that  we  can  drill  a  hole,  take  a  few  simple  logs,  and  treat  those  areas 
just  like  the  Sandpile.  In  certain  places  along  the  edges  of  the  valley 
there  may  be  another  Baneberry  surprise,  but  we'd  catch  it  with 
simple  logging.  Then  we  could  go  into  it  in  detail.  This  concept 
didn't  prevail  in  the  Data  Needs  Subcommittee  because  of  the 
opposition  of  the  Labs. 

Carothers:  What  sort  of  arguments  did  the  Labs  make?  You'd 
think  they  would  latch  onto  that  and  say,  "Here's  our  chance  to  save 
a  few  bucks." 

Twenhofel:  Well,  they  didn't.  I  think  there  were  two  reasons. 
If  you  have  numbers,  and  you  have  data,  that  gives  you  some 
appearance  of  having  done  a  good  job.  You've  gone  to  the  best  of 
your  capabilities.  Also,  the  calculators  do  like  to  have  some  of  those 
numbers.  I'm  not  trying  to  downgrade  their  attitude  at  all;  they  had 


154 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


a  good  attitude.  It  just  differed  a  little  bit  from  mine.  1  think  it's 
time  to  reopen  the  whole  question  of  what's  needed,  and  to  look  at 
it  again. 

Carothers:  Which  properties  do  you  think  do  matter  to 
containment? 

Twenhofel:  You  ought  to  know  the  carbonate  content.  You 
don't  have  to  know  it  precisely,  but  you  ought  to  know  if  it  gets  over 
six  or  seven  percent.  I  think  you  ought  to  know  if  there  are  some 
big  acoustic  interfaces.  The  Paleozoic  location  is  only  of  concern 
because  it's  an  acoustic  interface.  I  don't  see  any  reason  to  give 
water  content,  I  really  don't,  unless  you  want  to  know  it  for 
coupling,  and  placement  of  instruments. 

One  more  thing  about  physical  properties,  or  material  proper¬ 
ties.  I  think  the  histograms  that  are  presented  are  probably 
unnecessary.  We  now  have  such  a  wealth  of  experience,  since 
Baneberry,  with  all  those  grain  densities,  water  content,  gas-filled 
porosity,  and  all  that,  that  what  we  say  is,  "Well,  they're  within 
experience.  They're  within  successful  experience,  every  property." 
Well,  of  course  they  are.  We've  covered  a  span  now  from  5%  water 
to  27%  water,  so  any  value  we  get  is  going  to  fall  within  our 
successful  experience.  We're  deluding  ourselves  with  the  magic  of 
these  numbers  and  the  histograms,  in  thinking  that  they  are  relevant 
to  anything.  Again,  I'm  making  an  extreme  statement  to  make  a 
point. 

Carothers:  Or,I  could  put  it  as,  "We've  shot  in  just  about  every 
kind  of  geologic  medium  there  is  at  the  T est  Site,  and  so  the  material 
properties  of  a  new  site  are  almost  sure  to  fall  in  the  range  you've 
observed  before." 

Twenhofel:  And  many  of  them  don't  matter. 

As  contrasted  to  the  measurement  of  the  material  properties 
preshot,  either  in-situ  or  in  the  laboratory,  measurements  can  be 
attempted  of  the  response  of  the  material  to  the  shock  pressures  and 
motions  produced  by  the  detonation. 

Bass:  There  was  a  program  at  Sandia  that  was  beginning  to  get 
started  during  the  moratorium.  Luke  Vortman,  Lou  Perret,  and  Ai 
Chabai  had  a  very  nice  program  set  up  .  They  asked  me  if  I  would 
be  willing  to  go  to  work  with  AI  Chabai  on  this,  as  his  assistant.  I 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties  1 55 

said,  "Sure,"  and  I  got  involved  with  Hugoniot  determinations  for 
earth  materials.  The  main  thing  we  were  going  to  do  was  write  a 
report  on  close-in  effects  of  buried  underground  explosions,  be  they 
nuclear  or  chemical  made  no  difference.  We  wanted  to  look  at  the 
pressures  generated  close  by,  the  temperatures  generated,  whatever 
was  there. 

Livermore  was  heavily  involved  in  this  kind  of  work  through  the 
PNE  program.  Dave  Lombard  was  doing  this  at  Livermore.  He  was 
doing  a  lot  of  very  good  Hugoniot  work.  Bob  McQueen  was  doing 
it  at  Los  Alamos,  and  AI  Chabai  and  I  were  doing  it  at  Sandia.  We 
said,  "Let's  measure  Hugoniots,  let's  measure  elastic  waves.  Let's 
look  at  granite,  let's  look  at  alluvium."  Nobody  wanted  to  look  at 
alluvium  very  much.  We  looked  at  tuff  a  little  bit;  nobody  really 
wanted  to  look  at  tuff.  We  were  much  more  interested  in  oil  shales, 
sandstones,  and  things  like  that. 

Anyway,  we  got  going  on  it.  We  did  explosive  work  out  at 
Coyote  Canyon,  behind  Manzano.  We  had  an  explosive  site  out 
there  that  I  was  in  charge  of,  and  I  had  a  crew  of  about  eight  or  ten. 
It  wasn't  a  big  facility;  it  was  sort  of  an  ad  hoc  thing  that  we  put 
together.  So  we  started  doing  this,  and  we  were  chugging  along 
merrily,  measuring  shock  velocities  and  things  like  that.  Mainly  we 
were  doing  Hugoniot  work,  and  gauge  development. 

Carothers:  What  shock  pressures  were  you  trying  to  reach? 

Bass:  My  job  was  to  get  as  high  as  we  could.  We  wanted  to  get 
to  a  megabar.  At  that  time  Altschuler's  work  was  coming  out,  and 
Altschuler  was  getting  up  toward  a  megabar.  Everybody  said,  "How 
in  the  world  is  he  doing  it?"  The  answer  was  obvious  to  us  all  what 
he  was  doing,  but  it  was  never  in  the  literature.  It  has  been  finally 
admitted  he  was  using  nuclear  sources.  He  was  ahead  of  everybody, 
there's  no  question  about  that.  He  did  some  great  work,  and  I  think 
he's  still  around  and  still  doing  some  pretty  good  work.  McQueen 
had  started  doing  some  flyer  plate  work  at  Los  Alamos,  where  he  was 
getting  up  towards  a  megabar. 

It's  no  problem  at  all  to  get  to  a  couple  of  megabars  in  brass, 
or  steels,  or  maybe  even  aluminum.  Getting  a  geologic  material  up 
there  is  a  little  tougher,  because  its  impedance  is  so  much  lower.  We 
did  the  best  we  could;  we  would  run  flyer  plates  five  or  six  inches, 
and  planarity  was  going  to  heil  on  us;  we  were  generally  using  eight 
inch  flyer  plates  as  plane  wave  generators.  We  evacuated  the  path 


156  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

between  the  flyer  plate  and  the  target,  trying  to  cut  down  on  the  air 
shock  that  would  build  up  and  screw  up  our  instrumentation.  So  we 
would  fire  the  things  in  a  vacuum.  We  would  have  to  glue  the  plates 
to  the  explosive  to  keep  them  from  bowing  away  when  we  pumped 
them  down.  It  wasn't  a  very  good  vacuum,  but  you  certainly  could 
bow  an  eight  inch  plate;  eighty  mils  was  a  typical  thickness  for  the 
flyer  plates.  We  followed  McQueen's  work  on  this  directly.  I'd  say 
we  were  getting  up  to  a  megabar.  The  other  high  pressure  work  that 
was  being  done  was  being  done  by  Bill  Isbell,  at  General  Motors  at 
the  time. 

Higgins:  The  results  of  the  Livermore  work  on  Rainier,  and  that 
work  was  very  much  focused  just  on  Rainier,  caused  us  to  modify  our 
experimental  measurements  program.  We  had  three  or  four  people 
who  were  spending  a  lot  of  time  on  designing  measurement  tech¬ 
niques  for  the  megabar,  or  many  hundreds  of  kilobars,  pressure 
regime,  and  we  dropped  all  of  those  except  one  confirmatory 
measurement  that  was  done  on  the  Antler  experiment  in  1961. 
That  was  done  by  Dave  Lombard,  and  it  is  the  only  megabar  level 
active  measurement  that's  been  done  on  a  shot. 

I  can  remember  standing  up  at  a  meeting  at  Rand  Corporation, 
in  Santa  Monica,  and  making  an  impassioned  plea.  "Please  stop 
spending  all  this  money  on  ten  megabar  equations  of  state  because 
it  doesn't  make  a  bit  of  difference,  it's  all  electrons  anyway."  And 
I  wasn't  the  only  one  making  that  argument.  That  point  of  view 
prevailed,  and  so  all  that  work  stopped.  And  that  was  wrong.  It  was 
a  terrible  mistake. 

Carothers:  And  you  talked  them  into  it? 

Higgins:  Well,  I  was  one  of  those  who  did.  I've  thought  of 
things  I've  done  wrong,  and  that  was  certainly  one  of  them.  The 
consequence  of  that  decision  was  that  the  measurements  program 
centered  on  the  things  like  Bob  Bass  has  done  for  the  last  thirty 
years,  measuring  stress  levels  in  the  tens  to  low  hundred  kilobar 
range,  where  plastic  failure,  and  brittle  failure,  and  that  kind  of  thing 
is  happening.  Of  course,  that  region  is  important  not  only  for 
containment  purposes;  it's  important  for  structures  effects  pur¬ 
poses.  It's  a  region  where  the  mechanical  engineers  are  very 
uncomfortable  designing  things  like  bunkers,  and  missile  silos,  and 
very  crucial  elements  of  an  offensive  or  defensive  system.  Whether 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


157 


the  stresses  come  from  nuclear  or  not  nuclear  things,  that  stress 
region  is  important.  So,  it  wasn't  totally  a  mistake,  but  it  was  a 
mistake  from  the  standpoint  that  we  would  today  understand  more 
about  what  goes  on  in  the  explosion  than  we  do. 

Bass:  I  did  not  go  to  that  meeting  in  Santa  Monica.  1  was  in 
Rio  that  week,  and  if  I  had  a  choice,  I  would  be  in  Rio  de  Janiero. 

I  would  say  that  where  Gary  now  feels  we  are  lacking  is  not 
necessarily  in  the  megabar  region,  but  in  the  hundred  kilobar,  two 
hundred  kilobar  regime.  That's  because  the  phase  changes  that  are 
going  on  in  all  of  our  native  materials  have  been  terribly  handled 
theoretically.  The  various  contractors  who  have  worked  with  that 
have  really  botched  that  job  badly. 

When  you  get  into  a  porous  geologic  material,  apparently  the 
phase  change  can  move  down  in  pressure,  down  into  the  seventy  or 
eighty  kilobar  region,  because  of  the  temperature  that's  involved. 
Alluvium  does  funny  things.  Alluvium  starts  expanding  when  you 
get  above  a  hundred  kilobars  when  you  hit  it.  On  a  Hugoniot  plot 
of  pressure  versus  volume,  it  starts  expanding  when  you  get  up 
there,  because  you're  moving  back  in  the  temperature  curve.  It's 
a  mess,  and  I  don't  pretend  to  really  understand  what's  happening 
there. 

It  would  be  nice  to  have  data  in  the  megabar  region,  but  I'd 
rather  have  them  in  the  hundred  kilobar  regime.  Shell  Schuster, 
who  used  to  be  at  Livermore  said,  "Don't  measure  me  another 
Hugoniot,  for  God's  sake.  I  can  draw  them."  And  I  think  he's  right. 
You  can  draw  the  Hugoniot,  but  you  can't  write  the  equation  of 
state. 

I  think  we've  got  a  better  handle  on  some  of  these  things  than 
a  lot  of  people  realize.  There  have  been  two  decent  sources  of  data 
in  recent  years.  The  containment  program  has  provided  a  wealth  of 
data.  Frankly,  I  think  most  of  it  recently  has  come  from  DNA,  and 
Sandia.  I  think  that's  because  of  where  they  test.  The  DNA  tunnel 
events  give  you  the  opportunity  to  make  a  decent  measurement, 
because  you  can  get  there.  You  know  exactly  where  your  gauge  is, 
you  know  exactly  where  it's  pointing,  you  can  orient  it  with  a  transit. 
You  don't  have  to  dangle  it  down  a  hole,  or  put  it  in  a  satellite  hole. 

The  other  great  source  of  data  has  been  the  hydrodynamic 
yield  program,  and  this  a  tremendously  overlooked  source  of  data. 
We  got  seventy-five  pressure  measurements  in  tuffs  and  alluviums 


158  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

in  the  period  when  Los  Alamos  was  making  hydrodynamic  yield 
measurements.  Individually  they're  pretty  damn  bad,  but  as  a 
whole  they're  pretty  good.  There's  a  wealth  of  data  in  there  in  the 
500  kilobar  to  1 0  kilobar  pressure  regime.  There  are  awfully  good 
data  on  events  in  alluvium  up  to  500  kilobars.  I  know  they're  good 
because  I  made  the  measurements,  and  I'm  very  happy  with  them. 
They  were  not  measurements  of  wave  shape,  however.  They  were 
measures  of  peak  pressure,  and  at  500  kilobars  what  else  can  you 
have? 

Another  batch  of  data  came  from  Livermore.  Clyde  Seismore 
came  up  with  a  marvelous  pressure  gauge  that  worked  in  this 
pressure  regime.  It  was  a  bulb  of  plexiglass;  it  turns  out  that  when 
you  shock  plexiglass  it  puts  out  a  charge.  So,  Clyde  put  this  bulb 
of  plexiglass  downhole,  and  he  made  some  outstanding  measure¬ 
ments. 

App:  DNA  has  the  best  opportunity  to  look  at  material 
properties  in-situ,  and  at  what  material  damage  has  been  caused  by 
the  shot  because  they  can  go  into  the  tunnels  preshot,  and  can 
reenter  after  the  shot.  On  a  reentry  they  can  go  back  in  and  obtain 
core  samples  of  rock  that  has  been  shocked  to  a  kilobar,  or  five 
kilobars.  They  can  obtain  the  damaged  samples,  send  them  to  Terra 
Tek  and  have  them  measure  the  residual  strength. 

Carothers:  And  it's  different  from  the  strength  of  rock  that 
hasn't  been  shocked. 

App:  Yes  it  is.  For  the  cases  I  have  seen  on  reentry,  the  tuff 
appears  to  damage  more  than  the  grout.  Preshot,  both  the  rock  and 
the  grout  give  off  a  ringing  sound  when  hit  by  a  rock  hammer.  Post¬ 
shot,  the  grout  still  rings,  but  the  tuff  gives  off  a  dull  thud.  The  post¬ 
shot  tuff  can  be  pulled  from  the  walls  by  hand,  and  it  crumbles. 

DNA  has  taken  cores  from  damaged  rock  to  Terra  Tek,  and  the 
failure  properties  they  measure  are  way,  way  down.  Of  course,  it's 
a  function  of  range.  At  five  kilobars  the  damage  is  severe,  at  one 
kilobar  it  is  just  beginning,  and  at  five  hundred  bars  it  is  virtually 
nonexistent.  Damage  decreases  significantly  with  increasing  range. 

As  a  practical  matter,  on  the  vertical  shots  we  can't  obtain  such 
core,  so  we  have  to  estimate  damage  based  on  the  tunnel  rock 
observations.  Or  we  can  try  to  pseudo-damage  rocks  in  the 
laboratory  them  by  straining  them,  and  determine  how  they  weaken 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties  1 59 

with  strain.  You  can  do  that  up  to  a  point,  but  you  can't  get  the 
really  large,  twenty  percent  type  shear  strains  that  occur  in  an 
underground  test.  And,  you  can't  replicate  the  strain  rates  either. 
So,  we're  not  really  replicating  what  is  going  on  in  the  ground  with 
laboratory  tests. 

However,  with  laboratory  tests  we  can  get  some  feeling  whether 
a  material  is  going  to  damage  easily  or  not.  DNA  has  gone  to  a  lot 
of  effort  to  try  to  simulate  damage  in  the  lab,  but  with  a  lab  sample, 
once  you  get  a  through-going  shear  failure,  you've  lost  your 
experiment.  They  can't  achieve  twenty  percent  strains,  although 
the  people  at  Waterways  and  T erra  Tek  are  trying.  They're  coming 
up  with  new  schemes,  and  who  knows?  They  might  be  successful; 
it  would  be  very  valuable  to  the  calculational  community  if  they 
were. 

Carothers:  Suppose  you  get  a  sample  from  a  tunnel  location, 
and  you  send  it  to  Terra  Tek.  They  say  its  compressive  strength  is 
such  and  so.  There  are  folks  who  would  say,  "That's  the  value  for 
a  small,  competent  piece  of  material.  The  region  the  device  energy 
is  interacting  with  is  much  larger,  and  that  much  larger  volume  will 
have  things  in  it  like  fractures,  changes  in  porosity,  and  so  on. 
Therefore  the  lab  measurements  are  not  really  representative  of  the 
world  the  device  energy  is  going  to  interact  with." 

App:  That's  right.  But,  for  certain  types  of  rocks  apparently 
that  measurement  is  fairly  representative.  The  Tunnel  Beds  tuff  in 
the  tunnels  is  perhaps  one  of  those  rock  types.  The  DNA  modelers 
feel  that  the  in-situ  fractures  don't  modify  the  overall  properties 
much  from  what  one  obtains  from  the  small  samples.  The  reason 
they  believe  this  is  that  they  can  put  the  Terra  Tek  test  results  into 
their  models,  and  replicate  the  outgoing  shock  wave  fairly  well. 
Now,  I  said  outgoing  shock  wave;  late  time  residual  stress  is  a 
different  story. 

Other  rock  types  such  as  alluvium  and  welded  tuff  also  are  a 
different  story.  For  these  materials,  what  you're  saying  is  absolutely 
right.  You  cannot  go  from  the  laboratory  measurements  to  a 
calculation  that  agrees  with  the  field  data.  This  is  a  big  problem  for 
us,  and  the  approach  we  have  taken  is  to  start  a  systematic  study  of 
events  that  have  had  a  lot  of  free  field  measurements  associated  with 
them,  and  infer  the  response  properties  of  the  rock  mass  from  them. 
Merlin  alluvium  is  an  example.  The  Merlin  event  was  heavily 


160 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


instrumented  by  Sandia.  There  were  a  lot  of  working  point  level 
gauges,  some  horizontally  out,  and  some  vertically  up  from  the 
working  point.  Unfortunately,  the  Merlin  samples  are  the  only  ones 
recovered  for  alluvium  core  properties  measurements,  so  that's  the 
only  case  where  we  can  make  direct  comparison  to  the  calculations. 

We're  trying  to  create  a  library  of  properties  based  on  infer¬ 
ences  made  from  modeling,  as  opposed  to  from  core.  I  don't  know 
what  else  to  do.  This  approach  does  take  into  account  the  larger 
volume.  Exactly  what  you've  said  is  what  prompted  us  to  take  this 
course  of  action.  We  do  not  get  a  unique  solution  from  these 
calculations,  but  the  more  measurements  we  have,  the  closer  to 
unique  it  becomes.  So,  we  now  have  a  standard  equation  of  state 
for  Area  3  alluvium.  It's  not  based  on  mechanical  measurements, 
because  you  can't  obtain  core  in  alluvium.  If  you  do  get  core  it's 
only  the  more  competent  parts  of  the  material,  so  it  comes  back  to 
your  argument  that  it's  not  representative. 

What  is  representative  is  what  we  see  in  the  wave  forms,  and 
if  we  can  infer  properties  by  using  forward  modeling  techniques, 
then  we  can  come  up  with  an  equation  of  state  for  Area  3  alluvium. 
When  we  have  our  next  shot  in  Area  3  we  will  take  those  properties 
from  Merlin,  look  at  the  comparisons  of  the  physical  properties, 
such  as  density,  and  perhaps  make  a  few  adjustments,  but  keep  the 
same  basic  response  model.  Then  we  will  use  that  in  the  new 
location  where  we're  trying  to  do  a  site  evaluation. 

We're  currently  taking  this  approach  with  granite,  for  the 
verification  program.  We  have  the  same  problem  for  verification. 
And  so,  we're  trying  systematically  to  calculate  a  number  of  events. 
We've  been  doing  this  for  years  now,  as  time  permits.  It  is  not 
something  we  have  recently  started.  There  are  three  of  us  working 
on  this;  myself,  Wendee  Brunish,  and  Jim  Camm.  We've  calculated 
some  Pahute  Mesa  tests,  and  in  Yucca  Flat  we've  done  a  lot  of  work 
on  the  Hearts  event. 

Carothers:  I  would  think  that  Pahute  Mesa  would  be  your  most 
difficult  area.  On  Pahute  you  have  fairly  soft  layers  of  ashfall  or 
ashflow  rocks,  and  you  have  pillow  of  lavas,  so  you  have  hard  layers 
and  soft  layers.  AM  of  those  presumably  interact  with  the  outgoing 
wave.  How  do  you  handle  that? 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


161 


App:  It's  a  difficult  problem,  and  we're  not  happy  with  our 
Pahute  Mesa  results  in  comparison  with  the  experimental  data. 
We've  been  able  to  model  certain  aspects  of  them;  we're  able  to  see 
the  same  kind  of  rarefactions,  in  the  model,  coming  back  from  the 
hard  to  soft  transitions  that  we  see  in  the  measurements.  But  they 
are  only  qualitatively  similar.  Quantitatively,  no.  I  said  something 
about  uniqueness  earlier.  When  you  have  a  layered  situation,  it  is 
extremely  difficult.  From  the  modellingstandpoint  whatwe'd  really 
like  to  be  able  to  find  is  a  Pahute  Mesa  site  that  doesn't  have  any  soft 
layers,  but  then  we'd  be  afraid  to  conduct  the  event,  from  a 
containment  standpoint,  because  the  site  would  be  different  from 
any  we've  used  before. 

Carothers:  When  we  talk  about  differences  in  the  materials, 
over  what  physical  dimension  do  things  have  to  be  different  to 
produce  changes  in  the  response? 

App:  The  size  of  the  feature  compared  to  the  wavelength  is 
probably  the  most  relevant  thing.  If  a  feature  that  is  different  is 
quite  small  compared  to  the  wavelength,  it  may  not  be  very 
important.  This  is  not  always  true,  however.  It  would  not  take  a 
very  large  open  fracture  to  seriously  attenuate  the  signal.  The 
wavelength  is  going  to  increase  with  increasing  distance,  so  by  the 
time  you  get  out  to  where  the  wave  becomes  elastic,  it's  going  to 
take  a  fairly  large  feature  to  cause  a  serious  perturbation. 

Carothers:  Let's  consider  closer  to  the  device.  There  is  the 
thought  that  it  doesn't  matter  much  what's  close  to  the  device, 
because  the  energy  release  is  so  large  that  it  just  overwhelms  any 
minor  geologic  features.  Some  folks  think  that's  not  a  very  good 
argument. 

App:  I'm  not  one  of  those  people.  Close  in,  in  the  true  shock 
regime  where  the  wave  is  supersonic,  I  don't  think  response 
properties  of  the  solid  rock  much  matter.  For  rock  that  is  vaporized, 
it  does  make  a  difference.  Now,  again,  these  opinions  are  based  on 
modeling.  I  think  properties  do  matter  beyond  where  the  eventual 
edge  of  the  cavity  will  be,  at  the  few  kilobar  level  and  below.  The 
exact  range  would  be  somewhat  material  dependent. 

Two  and  three  dimensional  effects  are  important,  but  our 
serious  difficulties  lie  with  material  response. 


162  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Carothers:  But  that's  something  you  cannot  find  out  in  the 
laboratory  with  the  tests  that  you  can  make  today. 

App:  You're  right.  Not  to  the  degree  that  we  need  to.  I  think 
we  need  more  measurements  in  the  field,  and  from  that  data, 
backing  out  the  response  models  would  be  the  way  we  would  go. 
These  would  be  inferred  properties,  and  once  again,  there  is  a 
uniqueness  problem.  But,  if  you  get  enough  data,  using  reasonable 
assumptions  about  how  a  material  behaves,  augmented  by  mechani¬ 
cal  tests  in  the  laboratory,  you  might  be  able  to  back  out  how 
particular  classes  of  materials  behave. 

That  takes  an  experimental  program,  and  in  fact  that  is  part  of 
the  emphasis  right  now  in  verification,  to  do  more  well  controlled 
in-situ  experiments.  Modeling  plays  an  important  role  in  the 
experimental  setup.  In  order  to  maximize  our  ability  to  infer  bulk 
response  properties  of  the  rock,  instruments  must  be  located  well 
into  the  inelastic  zone,  and  at  numerous  locations. 

To  characterize  various  classes  of  rock  in  this  way  will  be  an 
expensive  process,  but  once  having  developed  a  library  of  proper¬ 
ties,  we  should  have  more  confidence  in  modeling,  and  understand¬ 
ing  the  more  important  effects  of  layering,  such  as  exists  at  Pahute 
Mesa.  Currently  it  is  very  difficult  to  sort  out  the  effects  of  layering. 

The  Pahute  Mesa  event  named  Houston  was  a  rare  example  of 
a  site  where  there's  considerable  thickness  of  hard  rock  without 
softer  interlayered  rock.  The  soft  layers  are  halfway  up  the  hole.  If 
we  can  have  another  shot  in  that  area,  where  we  can  get  instrumen¬ 
tation  strings  deep,  and  study  the  propagation  of  the  initial  outgoing 
wave,  then  we  can  learn  something  about  the  properties  of  a 
heretofore  difficult  material  to  characterize. 

Carothers:  Carl,  when  you  make  the  measurements  you're 
making,  I'm  sure  you  must  need  to  know  properties  of  the  materials. 
Where  do  you  get  that  information? 

Smith:  DNA  sends  cores  to  Terra  Tek  principally,  where  they 
are  squeezed.  The  data  from  that  goes  principally  to  Pac  Tech, 
where  Dan  Patch  does  most  of  the  stemming  calculations  for  DNA. 
The  other  big  source  of  information  is  Maggie  Baldwin  and  the 
people  at  DNA,  because  they're  the  ones  who  have  done  the 
exploratory  geophysics  work  in  those  holes. 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties  1 63 

Carothers:  Carl  you  have  said,  when  talking  about  the  equation 
of  state  work,  that  measurements  in  the  field  are  not  necessarily  at 
all  like  those  made  in  the  laboratory  on  samples.  Couldn't  the  same 
criticism  be  made  of  the  data  from  the  cores? 

Smith:  It's  a  question  of  economics.  With  a  fixed  pot  of  dollars 
you  could  spend  it  all  on  investigating  one  little  area,  and  know  more 
and  more  about  less  and  less  until  you  know  everything  about 
nothing.  Or  you  could  take  that  fixed  pot  of  dollars  and  explore  a 
larger  area  with  selected  measurements.  This  question  has  always 
been  a  bugaboo  for  DNA;  you've  got  all  these  variations  on  the  core 
measurements,  but  everyone  wants  to  treat  the  material  as  uniform, 
because  you  do  all  your  calculations  with  one  material. 

Actually,  for  years  DNA  has  been  very  successful  in  treating  all 
this  shot  area,  this  material  they  excite,  as  roughly  uniform  material 
with  some  faults  and  fractures  through  it.  But  now,  as  you  go  to 
smaller  and  smaller  shots,  and  maybe  go  into  a  new  tunnel,  and 
maybe  get  into  places  that  are  not  zeolitized,  now  maybe  these 
variable  things  come  back  to  haunt  you,  and  you  can't  treat  them 
as  a  single  element.  The  scale  is  no  longer  the  high  yields  where  you 
overwhelm  the  geology.  If  the  scale  is  that  for  only  half  a  kiloton, 
maybe  that  fault  is  going  to  eat  you  alive. 

Carothers:  Instead  of  taking  all  these  cores,  which  means  you 
have  to  drill  a  hole,  why  don't  you  run  logging  tools?  That's 
cheaper. 

Smith:  Logs  give  you  ope  type  of  information,  the  cores  give 
you  different  types  of  information.  Cores  give  you  information  up 
to  four  kilobars,  and  the  calculators  like  very  much  to  have  that. 

Calculations  of  many  kinds  are  done.  One  of  the  important 
questions  for  containment  is  how  the  gases  in  the  cavity,  originally 
at  very  high  temperatures  and  pressures,  flow  out  into  the  surround¬ 
ing  medium.  Central  to  that  is  the  permeability  of  the  materials  in 
the  earth  itself,  and  in  the  column  of  stemming  materials.  One  ofthe 
first  efforts  to  measure,  and  to  calculate  that  was  made  by  Carl 
Keller,  then  at  Los  Alamos,  in  the  early  seventies. 

Keller:  The  flow  paths  of  concern  were  the  stemming  column, 
the  chimney,  the  hypothetical  hydrofracture,  and  that  was  about  it. 
The  characterization  of  the  medium  required  for  hydrofrac  calcula¬ 
tions  was  never  done.  The  permeabilities  were  not  measured.  The 


164 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


in-situ  stresses  were  not  measured.  There  were  no  serious  measure¬ 
ments  even  of  stresses  near  the  events.  There  were  serious  efforts, 
but  the  data  certainly  weren't  of  the  quality  that  there  is  now. 
Cavity  pressures  were  not  measured.  They  were  inferred  from  LOS 
pipe  measurements  of  pressure,  and  those  weren't  too  bad.  Now 
they  seem  to  be  what  they  were  thought  to  be  then;  a  lower  bound 
on  the  cavity  pressure. 

Carothers:  How  could  you  run  a  gas  flow,  or  hydrofracture 
code?  You  just  listed  a  number  of  the  important  parameters  and  said 
you  didn't  know  them. 

Keller:  Cowles  and  Yerba  were  the  first  two  line-of-sight  pipe 
events  after  Baneberry.  Yerba  was  in  a  shaft,  and  so  we  had  access. 
So,  one  of  the  things  we  did,  having  that  state  of  ignorance,  was  that 
I  designed  a  permeability  measurement  scheme  for  the  Y erba  shaft, 
and  the  J-6  folks  built  the  hardware,  installed  it,  and  made  the 
measurements.  Every  hundred  feet  in  the  Yerba  shaft  we  made 
permeability  measurements,  and  those  are  still  the  only  permeabil¬ 
ity  measurements  with  that  kind  of  resolution  in  existence. 

Those  were  done  with  two  drill  holes.  One  was  the  air  injection 
hole,  and  you  measured  the  flow  rate  and  the  pressure  history  at  the 
bottom  of  the  hole.  They  were  essentially  packed  off  so  you  only 
had  a  small  volume  at  the  bottom,  which  was  the  gas  source,  that 
was  free  to  leak  into  the  medium.  And  given  the  pressure  history 
and  the  flow  rate,  you  can  determine  a  permeability.  The  second 
hole  measured  the  pressure  of  the  flow  field.  That's  a  check,  a 
redundant  check,  and  from  that  you  can  also  deduce  a  permeability. 
And  so  with  that  over-constrained  system  we  could  tell  whether  or 
not  it  was  really  spherical  flow,  and  we  could  tell  whether  it  had 
come  to  equilibrium,  and  some  of  those  kind  of  things. 

The  Yerba  measurements  have  been  invoked  countless  times  as 
characteristic  of  alluvium.  Well,  alluvium  is  a  highly  variable 
material.  One  of  the  most  glaring  examples  of  the  differences  in 
alluvium  are  the  Agrini  crater,  which  was  200  feet  deep  and  bigger 
at  the  bottom  than  at  the  top,  versus  Pike,  where  the  alluvium  just 
fell  in  like  a  big  sand  pile.  Some  of  the  alluviums  crater  very 
gracefully;  they  just  fall  in  and  there's  a  big  flow,  a  big  slump  down 
to  the  bottom. 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties  1 65 

There  have  been  other  permeability  measurements  made  by 
other  people.  Frank  Morrison  and  the  Livermore  folks  tried  to 
deduce  permeabilities  from  pressure  histories  measured  during  the 
stemming  process,  which  is  kind  of  a  clever  way  of  doing  it.  It's 
pretty  complicated,  but  in  principle  you  can  do  it  with  enough  math, 
and  get  a  measure  of  the  permeability. 

Another  way  was  to  measure  pressure  histories  in  drill-back 
holes,  and  from  that  try  to  measure  overall  permeabilities.  I  think 
those  are  fine  for  a  real  gross  measurement,  but  there  are  serious 
problems  with  them.  For  one,  the  volume  of  the  hole  can  be  a  real 
problem  because  you  have  to  fill  the  hole.  It's  not  like  you  have  this 
ideal  pressure  probe  which  does  not  influence  the  flow.  You  have 
to  fill  the  hole,  and  these  flows  are  very  small  with  that  kind  of 
driver,  so  it  takes  time  to  fill  the  hole.  And  then  the  hole  can 
actually  leak  off,  because  they're  not  all  cased,  and  most  of  them  are 
not  grouted  even  if  they  do  have  a  casing  in  them.  And  so  you  never 
know,  because  you  can  get  strange  flows.  You  can  come  up  in  this 
hole,  and  run  down  to  the  bottom  of  that  one,  and  shortcut  the 
medium.  There  are  a  lot  of  problems  with  those  measurements.  So, 
it  gives  you  a  very  gross  measure.  There  are  better  ways  of  making 
measurements. 

You  can  even  infer  permeabilities.  If  you  presume  that  you 
know  the  noncondensable  gas  source,  then  you  can,  from  the  arrival 
times  at  the  surfaces  for  those  that  have  leaked,  infer  chimney 
permeability. 

Carothers:  Well,  along  these  same  lines,  in  the  CEP  you  often 
hear  somebody  say  something  like,  "Well,  you  may  get  a  fracture  to 
here,  or  there  may  be  gas  transport  to  there,  but  this  layer  has  a  lot 
of  permeability  and  porosity,  and  so  it  will  just  soak  everything  up. 

Keller:  Yes,  you  do  hear  that  a  lot.  The  people  making  those 
statements  are  not  very  quantitative  in  those  areas,  but  they  could 
be.  Those  kinds  of  statements  could  be  supported  completely  with 
simple  noncondensable  gas  flow  calculations.  Or  you  can  even  do 
hydrofrac  calculations.  Generally  people  infer  that  if  you  have  a 
high  porosity,  high  air  void  content,  then  you  have  a  high  perme¬ 
ability.  That's  sometimes  true,  but  not  necessarily  so. 

And  the  permeability  is  never  measured;  it's  always  inferred 
from  other  characteristics.  That's  bothered  me  forever.  There  have 
been  some  pretty  strong  statements  about  pore  space  available,  but 


166 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


it  is  the  permeability  that  determines  whether  it's  really  available. 
Some  air  voids  are  not  available;  they're  in  pumice  shards,  for 
instance,  and  they're  sealed  off. 

Near  the  detonation  point  the  shock  pressures,  the  stresses  and 
the  strains  the  material  undergoes,  and  the  time  scales  on  which  they 
occur  are  beyond  those  that  can  be  created  in  the  laboratory.  Data 
from  instruments  located  in  the  material  near  the  shot  point  can  give 
some  information,  but  the  environment  is  severe,  and  such  experi¬ 
ments  are  extremely  difficult  to  do.  Carl  Smith  has  done  extensive 
work  on  developing  ways  to  make  such  measurements  in  the  field, 
on  both  nuclear  events  and  high  explosive  experiments. 

Smith:  I  have  principally  done  gauging  work,  working  on  gauge 
development  techniques,  trying  to  make  in-situ  equation  of  state 
measurements.  Equation  of  state  measurements  typically  are  made 
in  the  laboratory  on  small  samples.  Of  course,  if  the  sample  breaks 
you  discard  it,  and  get  an  intact  sample.  But  field  work  invariably 
involves  fractures,  and  faults,  and  things  like  that,  and  so  the  big 
push  for  many  years  was  how  to  develop  techniques,  and  how  to 
make  measurements  for  in-situ  equation  of  state  type  work. 

The  equation  of  state  measurements  principally  revolve  around 
the  area  from  the  near  elastic  into  the  shock  wave  regime,  so  you're 
through  the  yield  range  of  soft  rocks,  like  tuffs.  That's  from  like  half 
a  kilobar  up  to  the  ten  kilobar  regime,  where  the  yield  effects  take 
place,  and  that's  where  the  unknowns  are  in  the  equations  of  states. 

In  such  work  you  need  measurements  of  both  motion  and 
stress,  because  of  the  three  dimensionality  of  the  meaurements  in 
the  field.  In  gas-gun  work  you  have  one  dimension,  and  you  can  take 
stress  measurements  and  get  the  motion  measurements  out  of  them, 
through  the  Hugoniot  equations  of  state.  On  a  gas-gun  type  of  shot 
you  slice  the  rock,  put  in  these  material  gauges,  which  can  be  as  thin 
as  mils,  and  then  glue  all  the  layers  back  together.  The  shock  passes 
through  the  rock  from  one  end  to  the  other,  and  so  it's  one 
dimensional. 

In  measurements  in  the  field,  because  of  the  spherical  diver¬ 
gence,  you  need  the  hoop  stresses,  the  radial  strains  and  the  radial 
stresses,  and  particle  velocity  measurements.  And  so,  very  quickly, 
you  become  aware  that  the  Achilles  heel  of  all  that  work  is  in 
developing  instruments  to  make  viable  measurements. 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


167 


The  seventies  were  the  days  when  we  started  developingthe  so- 
called  ytterbium  gauge.  Ytterbium  is  an  odd-ball  element  that  sits 
off  the  periodic  chart,  and  has  a  very  strange  electronic  structure. 
As  discovered  by  Bridgeman  and  others,  it  has  a  very  wild  stress- 
piezoresistive  effect.  In  other  words,  as  you  squeeze,  it  changes  it's 
resistance. 

On  a  field  event  you  don't  have  the  ability  to  build  an  in¬ 
material  gauge,  as  you  do  on  a  gas-gun  shot.  You  have  to  drill  holes, 
insert  the  gauges,  and  put  in  grouting  material.  The  concern  then 
is,  does  the  grout  material  match  the  host  in  some  way.  In 
particular,  you  want  a  measurement  that  is  representative  of  the 
free-field  stress  in  the  rock,  in  a  material  that  is  not  the  rock  itself. 
That's  the  so-called  inclusion  problem  that  people  have  worked  on 
for  numerous  years. 

Carothers:  You  say  you  want  the  grout  to  match  the  rock  in 
some  way;  which  characteristics  are  most  important? 

Smith:  Compressibility.  In  other  words,  does  the  grout 
deform  in  the  same  way  as  the  host  rock. 

Carothers:  When  you  get  into  the  ten  kilobar  range,  you're  in 
the  region  where  the  tuffs  are  plastic.  That  means  you're  near  the 
edge  of  the  cavity,  where  it's  still  growing.  How  do  you  make  things 
survive? 

Smith:  They  don't.  Principally  it's  the  cables  and  electrical 
leads  that  are  destroyed.  Sometimes  we  can  go  in  on  a  mine-back 
and  find  these  gauges.  When  we  find  them,  the  first  thing  we  do  is 
see  if  the  gauge  is  still  intact.  Almost  invariably  it  is,  but  the  leads 
that  have  been  severed,  or  torn  off  the  package,  or  somewhere 
something  like  a  fault  has  moved  differentially  and  sheared  the 
cables. 

What  we're  getting  out  of  the  gauges  now  is  the  arrival  time, 
a  rise  to  peak,  and  then  a  little  bit  of  unloading,  enough  stress  wave 
unloading  so  we  can  say  that  we  have  indeed  captured  the  peak, 
rather  than  having  it  go  up  and  stop  before  it  reaches  the  top.  One 
of  the  efforts  nowadays  is  to  enhance  those  recordings,  and  to 
incease  the  recording  times  by  building  armored  cables,  and  so  on. 

To  build  stonger  cables  we're  now  using  a  technique  that  uses 
wire-rope.  The  first  time  we  did  that  we  took  a  wire  rope,  took  off 
the  outside  strands,  replaced  the  center  core  with  the  electrical 


168  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

cable,  and  then  wrapped  the  outside  wires  back  on  the  rope.  Now 
we've  gotten  sophisticated,  and  we're  going  to  a  wire-rope  manu¬ 
facturer  to  have  the  cables  built  that  way.  At  the  end  of  a 
production  run  on  something  of  about  the  right  size,  we  stick  our 
spool  of  cable  at  the  back  of  the  machine,  and  have  the  wire-rope 
made  with  our  electrical  cable  as  the  center. 

The  shock  wave  damages  the  materials  through  which  it  passes, 
and  changes  their  properties.  Those  properties  are  of  importance  in 
what  occurs  in  the  later  time  processes  around  the  cavity.  Attempt¬ 
ing  to  reproduce  in  the  laboratory  the  damage  that  occurs  due  to  the 
shock  loading  is  extremely  difficult  to  do,  and  the  material  proper¬ 
ties  measured  on  such  damaged  rock  samples  as  can  be  produced 
may  be  quite  different  than  those  of  materials  near  the  detonation. 
Persons  attempting  to  develop  models  to  predict  the  ground  re¬ 
sponse  must  often  infer  the  material  properties  by  trying  to  match 
their  calculations  to  data  such  as  arrival  times,  peak  values,  and 
decay  times  of  the  pressure  pulse. 

Keller:  One  of  the  really  interesting  experiments  we  did  was  on 
one  of  Sandia's  shots  called  One  Ton,  which  was  done  by  Carl 
Smith.  We  obtained,  from  the  working  point  region  of  One  Ton, 
big,  twelve  inch  core.  We  took  that  to  SRI,  cut  it,  machined  it,  and 
put  it  in  our  HE  charges  with  the  wires,  to  measure  the  response  of 
that  tuff  from  the  working  point  of  the  One  Ton  HE  shot.  We  also 
took  core  to  Terra  Tek,  and  measured,  in  the  laboratory,  the 
strength  properties  of  that  same  material. 

Both  S-Cubed  and  Pac  Tech  did  calculations  of  the  SRI  test,  and 
of  One  Ton.  This  was  before  the  shot.  Then  Sandia  shot  One  Ton, 
and  made  good  stress  measurements  all  around  it.  I  asked  Sandia 
not  to  tell  the  calculators  what  the  results  were. 

I  had  asked  the  calculators  to  take  the  properties  of  the  cores 
that  Terra  Tek  had  measured,  and  calculate  the  SRI  test.  Then  they 
could  see  the  SRI  test  results,  and  they  could  take  those  results  and 
modify  their  equation-of-state  if  they  wanted  to,  and  then  they  were 
to  predict  the  One  Ton  results. 

We  met  at  S-Cubed,  and  they  had  their  viewgraphs  of  the  stress 
histories  at  the  various  ranges,  which  had  been  pre-selected  on  the 
SRI  tests  and  on  the  One  Ton  tests.  We  had  pre-selected  the  scales 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


169 


to  use  in  the  plots  of  the  results,  so  you  could  overlay  them.  Sandia 
would  put  down  the  measurement  from  One  Ton,  and  S-Cubed 
would  put  down  their  stress  history,  and  then  Pac  Tech  would  put 
down  their  stress  history,  right  on  top.  The  correlation  between  the 
predictions  and  the  measurements  was  really  quite  good.  It  wasn't 
equally  good  at  all  ranges.  The  calculations  were  better  close-in 
than  they  were  far-out. 

We  discovered,  out  of  that  series,  that  the  way  Terra  Tek  was 
measuring  the  pressure  versus  volume  curve  was  not  good.  They 
just  put  the  sample  in  the  holder  and  squeezed  it.  From  that  they 
would  get  a  pressure  versus  volume  curve.  However,  if  they  put  the 
sample  in  the  holder,  squeezed  it  up  to  the  overburden  stress,  where 
the  samples  had  been  obtained,  and  let  it  sit  there  for  a  while,  it 
would  creep  to  a  lower  volume.  Doing  that  sort  of  replaced  the 
sample  in  the  mountain,  and  now  when  they  ran  their  pressure 
versus  volume  curve  they  got  much  lower  compaction.  It  turned  out 
that  you  needed  lower  compaction  in  order  to  match  the  results. 
That  was  a  really  instructive  series,  where  we  compared  our 
predictions  and  our  procedures  to  reality.  Sandia  was  very  helpful 
on  that. 

Patch:  The  most  important  things  that  go  into  the  models  are 
the  mechanical  test  data  that  are  done  in  the  laboratory,  on  cores. 
And  those  tests  have  some  serious  limitations  that  everybody 
understands.  The  people  doing  the  tests  certainly  do,  and  the  users 
do  as  well.  One  of  the  most  serious  limitations  is  that  they  are 
limited  in  the  total  amount  of  strain,  because  they  can  only  squash 
the  rock  so  much.  Nuclear  bombs,  near  where  the  bomb  is,  have 
a  way  of  scrunching  the  rock  a  whole  lot.  That  strain  path  is  just  not 
accessible  in  the  laboratory. 

Carothers:  My  impression  is  that  they  can  go  up  to  about  four 
kilobars. 

Patch:  Yes,  they  can  go  to  about  four  kilobars.  We  have  gotten 
up  to  six  kilobars  at  Terra  Tek,  and  I  think  eight  kilobars  is  doable 
in  a  Terra  Tek  type  test.  They  can  go  up  to  twenty-five  kilobars,  but 
the  problem  is,  you  don't  get  out  the  data  you  need.  What  you're 
really  looking  for  is  the  response  of  the  rock  in  terms  of  its  deviatoric 
response,  and  so  on.  Just  pushing  on  a  rock  and  measuring  how 


170 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


much  it  squeezes  gives  you  some  data,  but  there  are  many  other 
things  you  want  to  know.  So,  it  doesn't  help  just  to  go  to  some  high 
stress  level. 

The  other  factor  is  that  you  can  load  the  core  to  four  kilobars 
by  loading  it  axially,  but  you  can  only  deform  it  so  much  before  you 
reach  the  limits  of  the  machine.  The  problem  is  that  in  the  ground, 
rock  that's  squeezed  to  four  kilobars  subsequently  moves  out  a  long 
ways,  and  undergoes  a  lot  of  strain.  It  laterally  stretches  and  it 
compresses  axially,  and  that  occurs  at  much  less  than  four  kilobars. 
A  great  deal  of  that  motion  might  be  at  only  a  quarter  or  half,  or 
maybe  three-quarters  of  a  kilobar.  A  lot  of  that  deformation  goes 
on  at  low  levels,  and  one  could  track  that  in  the  laboratory,  except 
that  there  are  mechanical  limitations  on  the  machinery. 

The  other  problem  we  have  with  mechanical  test  data,  and  in 
some  ways  it's  almost  more  serious,  is  that  in  the  ground,  when  the 
material  is  deformed  there  is  a  funny  kind  of  lateral  constraint.  To 
first  order  the  material  is  forced  to  move  out  spherically  symmetri¬ 
cally.  Maybe  block  motion  happens  later  on,  and  other  funny 
things,  but  by  and  large,  if  you  go  in  and  look  at  any  given  piece  of 
material,  you  can  pretty  much  convince  yourself  that  it's  been 
homogeneously  moved  out  and  stretched.  To  the  zeroth  order  it's 
an  isovolumetric  strain  path.  If  you  try  to  do  that  on  a  sample  in 
the  laboratory,  you  can  do  the  compression  part  of  it.  Once  you 
try  to  mimic  the  part  of  the  strain  path  that  amounts  to  stretching 
it  laterally,  and  taking  up  that  so  it  is  kind  of  isovolumetric,  the  rock 
wants  to  fracture  along  a  shear  plane.  It  wants  to  form  these  shear 
planes,  and  now  suddenly  it's  not  a  continuum  material  anymore. 
You're  doing  a  friction  test  in  a  way,  and  you  get  data  out  of  the  test 
that  looks  reasonable.  The  only  problem  is,  it  doesn't  have  any 
relationship  to  the  way  the  material  is  behaving  either  in  the  field 
or  in  any  kind  of  continuum  sense.  That's  one  of  the  serious 
problems,  and  we  have  to  finesse  our  way  around  that. 

Rimer:  I've  been  working  for  a  number  of  years,  trying  to 
understand  how  the  rock  gets  damaged.  I  have  not  been  able  to  get 
data  in  tuff,  because  its  permeability  is  so  low,  for  effective  stress 
modeling.  So,  I  assume  the  laboratory  data  we  have  has  the  pore 
pressure  built  into  it,  because  the  strengths  are  lower  because  of  the 
saturation.  I  am  still  trying  to  get  measures  of  how  much  of  the 
material  is  damaged  from  the  shot. 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


171 


We  tried  to  do  a  laboratory  material  properties  test  at  Terra 
Tek  that  would  go  along  the  strain  paths.  Unfortunately,  you 
cannot  confine  the  material  in  the  laboratory  like  it  is  underground. 
Underground  it's  confined  by  adjacent  material  doing  the  same 
thing.  You  have  membranes  around  it  in  the  laboratory,  with 
pressures  on  them,  but  you  can  only  measure  the  strains  in  a  couple 
of  locations  around  the  circumference.  And,  you  don't  even  know 
what  path  you're  on.  As  you  start  to  unload  the  material,  you  get 
a  through-going  fracture,  so  those  samples  are  worthless  for  mate¬ 
rial  tests  after  that.  So,  that  work  was  unsuccessful. 

There  is  another  set  of  data  on  reentries  and  core  samples  taken 
at  the  time  of  Hybla  Gold,  which  was  near  Dining  Car.  These  show 
that  the  samples  that  were  near  Dining  Car  were  damaged  greatly. 
Their  strengths  were  extremely  low,  much  lower  than  we  can 
reproduce  in  the  laboratory  by  damaging  the  material  to  the  same 
peak  stress  levels.  So,  my  hypothesis  was  that  the  total  shear-strain 
the  material  has  seen  is  greatly  different,  based  on  calculations,  than 
with  any  model.  And  that's  the  difference;  we  should  make  the 
damage  that  we  see  a  function  of  shear-strain. 

In  late  1 990  I  and  Bill  Proffer,  who  did  the  calculations  for  me, 
used  that  Terra  Tek  data  to  do  some  residual  stress  calculations. 
Those  calculations  give  grossly  different  residual  stresses.  The  peak 
in  the  residual  stress  is  further  out,  but  it's  still  considerably  higher 
than  the  cavity  pressure.  Even  though  the  material  is  now  much 
weaker,  peak  stresses  are  the  same  as  with  the  other  model.  So  are 
peak  velocities,  so  are  cavity  pressures,  and  cavity  size.  The  material 
goes  out  more,  comes  back  more,  and  ends  up  at  about  the  same 
place.  But,  it  undergoes  a  lot  more  plastic  work.  It  gives  low  peak 
residual  stresses  further  out,  but  gives  almost  no  residual  stresses 
out  to,  let's  say,  the  range  of  the  FAC,  the  Fast  Acting  Closure.  The 
other  model  would  say  a  third  of  the  way  from  the  cavity  to  FAC 
you've  got  strong  residual  stresses,  much  higher  than  cavity  pres¬ 
sure. 

I  think  that's  why  we  see  radiation  as  far  as  the  FAC  on  many 
of  the  DNA  events.  There's  a  nice  closure,  but  it's  permeable,  and 
the  residual  stresses  aren't  there  to  keep  it  closed.  And  so,  you  get 
a  little  seep  of  material  through  that  grout  to  the  FAC.  It  doesn't 
influence  containment  because  there's  a  gas-tight  closure  further 


1 72  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

down,  but  there's  a  little  seep.  Operationally  it  means  we  can't 
examine  and  take  out  the  FAC  anymore.  But  I  think  that's  in  line 
with  the  new  calculations  I've  been  doing  with  this  new  model. 

We  know  that  post-shot  we  have  much  lower  strength  in  the 
material.  When  this  strength  reduction  occurs  is  anyone's  guess. 
My  guess  is  that  it  doesn't  occur  when  the  peak  stress  is  reached. 
The  material  continues  to  strain  all  the  while  it's  moving  out,  and 
the  strains  it  gets  to  may  be  a  factor  of  three  higher  than  the  strain 
it  sees  at  the  peak  stress  of  the  shock  wave. 

I  recently  saw  some  interesting  data.  Terra  Tek  had  taken 
preshot  samples  from  Disko  Elm,  and  they  did  the  normal  tests  on 
them.  Then  they  did  SEM  tests,  the  scanning  electron  microscope 
tests.  Then  they  used  what  they  call  a  Wood's  Metal  approach, 
where  they  use  melted  metal,  which  gets  into  the  open  pores  and 
fractures  of  the  sample.  They  shine  a  laser  on  the  sample,  and  they 
get  marvelous  color  pictures  of  the  microstructure  at  different 
scales,  even  better  than  they  get  from  the  SEM  pictures. 

They  did  the  same  thing  to  materials  they  took  post-shot,  at  the 
same  stress  levels.  The  pictures  are  totally  different.  At  two 
kilobars,  from  samples  that  were  damaged  in  the  laboratory  by 
squeezing,  you  see  some  signs  of  pore  crush-up,  but  just  a  little  bit. 
Once  in  a  while  you  see  a  little  fracture.  At  two  kilobars,  in  the  in- 
situ,  shot  damaged  material,  there  are  fractures  throughout  it.  It 
looks  like  a  totally  different  process  has  occurred. 

Carothers:  Well,  sure.  The  material  near  the  shot  doesn't  get 
just  compressed.  It  also  gets  stretched  tangentially,  because  it's 
moving  out. 

Rimer:  That's  right.  Exactly.  And  that's  true  even  at  two 
kilobars.  That's  what  I  mean  by  the  strain  test.  I'm  using  shear- 
strain,  because  mathematically  it's  a  principal  invariant.  The  lateral 
strain  is  tensile,  the  radial  strain  is  compressive.  They  add  together, 
and  you  get  four  percent,  roughly,  at  four  kilobars  peak  stress. 
That's  almost  all  radial  strain,  but  then  it  keeps  stretching  as  it 
moves  out  almost  incompressibly.  The  strain  is  enormous;  you  can 
get  twelve  percent  strain,  and  that's  what  I'm  trying  to  model.  I 
don't  know  the  numbers,  the  parameters,  but  when  it  reaches  ten 
percentstrain  I  think  it's  mush.  And  we've  seen  plenty  of  mush  near 
the  cavity.  These  results  that  Terra  Tek  showed  are  another 
confirmation  of  that. 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


173 


Ristvet:  You  get  into  totally  microfailed  material  as  you  get 
about  a  quarter  of  a  cavity  radius  away  from  the  cavity  boundary. 
You  start  seeing  isolated  pockets  of  this  material  from  about  two 
cavity  radii  in,  and  it  is  basically  like  cohesive  silt,  i  would  say  its 
unconfined  strength  is  only  a  few  hundred  psi,  as  a  result  of  the 
microfracturing.  We've  documented  that  at  Terra  Tek  and  USGS, 
and  we  see  it  in  the  shear  wave  drop,  and  so  forth.  It's  for  real. 

Rimer:  Terra  Tek  also  did  uniaxial  strain,  and  triaxials  on  those 
damaged  samples  from  Disko  Elm.  They  have  much  lower  strength, 
and  the  strengths  get  lower  and  lower,  within  the  scatter  of  the  tuff, 
as  it's  been  hit  harder.  I  don't  know  if  strain  is  the  right  thing  to  use, 
but  it's  much  better  than  stress. 

App:  In  the  effective  stress  there  are  theories  that  the  pressure 
of  the  water,  after  it  has  been  shocked  and  some  unloading  has 
occurred,  exceeds  the  stress  in  the  matrix.  Then,  essentially  the 
response  of  the  whole  aggregate  is  determined  by  the  response 
properties  of  the  water.  And  the  more  water  you  have,  the  more 
that's  going  to  occur.  In  an  effective  stress  model,  the  strength, 
after  the  material  has  been  loaded  up  to  a  certain  point,  comes  back 
to  zero.  There's  no  strength  left,  and  it  is  the  water  in  the  pores  that 
determines  the  response  of  the  material. 

One  reason  the  effective  stress  models  have  not  been  adopted 
universally  is  their  extreme  sensitivity  to  small  changes  in  mechani¬ 
cal  behavior  such  as  dilation,  porosity  increase  due  to  shear  induced 
microfractures.  Pore  pressure,  and  therefore  shear  strength,  is  very 
sensitive  to  such  increases  in  porosity.  Yet,  in  the  field,  we  do  not 
observe  huge  variations  in  observed  phenomena  from  site  to  site,  at 
least  not  at  the  scale  that  is  suggestd  could  occur  due  to  dilation. 

Carothers:  In  P  tunnel  there  was  a  small  change  in  something 
that  made  a  big  change  in  the  response  of  the  ground. 

App:  Well,  yes.  DNA  does  have  a  prime  example  that  is 
contrary  to  what  I  was  just  saying.  Why  was  Mission  Cyber  so 
different  from  Disko  Elm?  Those  were  two  shots  that  were  very 
similar.  If  I'd  thought  of  that  a  minute  ago  when  I  started  on  that 
little  spiel  about  not  seeing  much  difference,  I  might  not  have  said 
it.  There  is  apparently  some  change  so  hidden  that  nobody's  been 
able  to  identify  it.  Thus  far,  the  only  difference  that  has  been 
identified  is  the  minerology,  and  we  cannot  determine  how  that 


174  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

would  alter  the  phenomenology.  One  site  has  been  altered  to 
zeolite,  and  the  other  hasn't.  The  mechanical  properties  from  both 
sites  are  about  the  same.  There  is  no  known  answer  at  this  time. 

Rimer:  With  the  things  we  usually  successfully  measure,  the 
free-field  ground  motion,  the  calcuiationai  results  do  not  tell  you 
which  model  is  better.  Residual  stresses  would,  and  we're  still  trying 
to  measure  them;  real  hard  we're  trying  to  measure  them.  The 
problem  has  been  gauge  breakage,  and  cable  breakage. 

Carothers:  How  about  a  self-contained,  hardened  instrument 
that  you  recover  after  the  shot? 

Rimer:  Great  idea  !  We  tried  that  with  the  SCEMS,  the  Self 
Contained  Environment  Measurement  System,  a  big  heavy  piece  of 
equipment  that  does  that.  And  the  batteries  went  dead  on  it. 

There's  a  paper  by  a  guy  named  Starfield,  in  which  he  talks 
about  the  limits  of  our  ability  to  understand  rocks,  and  classifies 
calculations  by  how  much  data  is  available  on  the  material;  how 
much  data  is  available  to  isolate  the  physical  models  that  are 
important.  It's  a  very  interesting  paper.  It  really  tells  you  how 
limited  you  are  in  rock  mechanics,  in  your  understanding.  That's 
not  to  say  you  don't  learn  anything  about  how  materials  behave  by 
looking  at  measurements,  and  trying  to  match  measurements.  You 
need  to  know  as  much  as  you  can  about  the  properties  of  the  rock, 
and  I  get  very  exercised  every  time  I'm  at  a  CEP,  because  they  go 
into  enormous  detail  about  sonic  velocities,  and  physical  properties, 
but  they  don't  talk  about  strength.  And  containment  is,  to  zeroth 
order,  a  strength  phenomenon.  Water  matters,  for  cavity  pressure, 
and  it  has  an  effect  on  strength.  Gas  porosity  matters  in  attenuating 
peak  motions,  and  surface  velocities.  Why  anyone  cares  about 
surface  velocities  for  these  deeply  buried  shots  I  don't  know.  I  guess 
it's  easy  to  measure. 

Carothers:  I  don't  think  anybody  knows  how  to  measure  the 
in-situ  strength,  unfortunately. 

Rimer:  That's  true.  Now,  Bob  Schock  looked  at  how  you  could 
determine  strength  from  the  measurements  we  have.  He  found  a 
strong  correlation  with  the  shear  modulus,  the  modulus  of  rigidity, 
the  shear  wave  velocity.  Any  one  of  those,  because  they  all  use  the 
same  quantity,  really.  I  always  thought  an  improvement  would  be 
to  measure  the  in-situ  shear  wave  velocity,  because  you  can  get  a 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties 


175 


shear  modulus,  and  from  that  maybe  get  an  idea  of  the  strength. 
Not  the  full  story,  but  a  feeling.  Now,  John  Rambo,  at  Livermore, 
looks  at  drilling  rates  as  a  measure  of  strength.  He's  come  up  with 
some  interesting  correlations. 

Carothers:  But  the  drilling  rate  depends  on  a  lot  of  things  you 
don't  know.  How  sharp  is  the  bit,  how  much  weight  is  on  it,  are  the 
drillers  pushing  today,  or  taking  it  easy. 

Rimer:  I  understand.  But  it's  something  that's  worth  looking 
at. 

Another  thing  we  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  on  was  Pile  Driver. 
I  must  have  done  thirty  or  more  one-dimensional  calculations,  and 
a  number  of  2-D  calculations,  to  develop  a  model  for  the  in-situ 
strength  of  the  Pile  Driver  granite.  The  intact  rock  was  very  strong, 
but  the  pulse  width  measurements  that  Perret  and  Bass,  at  Sandia, 
did,  and  SRI  did  showed  wider  pulse  widths,  which  shows  weaker 
material.  By  pulse  width  I  mean  velocity  versus  time. 

Carothers:  There  are  folks  who  might  say,  "The  rock  is  very 
strong.  We've  taken  good,  intact  cores  to  the  lab,  checked  them 
out,  and  it's  strong  rock  all  right.  No  doubt  about  it."  And  there 
are  other  folks  who  might  say,  "That's  all  very  well,  but  that's  a 
mountain  there,  which  is  not  intact.  It's  full  of  cracks  and  fractures 
which  weakens  the  rock." 

Rimer:  A  one-foot  joint  spacing. 

Carothers:  For  example.  And  so,  you  have  all  these  numbers 
from  these  unfractured  cores,  but  you've  got  deal  with  all  this 
fractured  rubble,  to  exaggerate  a  little. 

Rimer:  I  spent  a  considerable  period  of  my  life  dealing  with 
that.  Ted  Cherry's  idea,  and  he  first  thought  of  it  back  at  Livermore, 
was  that  there  was  water  in  the  fractures.  At  this  point  I  think  it's 
more  likely  there's  clay  there.  Either  way  it  results  in  a  weaker, 
lubricated  joint  system.  Ted  modeled  that  with  an  effective  stress 
model.  We  tried  a  number  of  things,  and  that's  what  I  spent  a  lot 
of  time  on.  What  could  we  do  that  was  reasonable,  where  we  used 
the  laboratory  strength  of  the  granite,  which  was  superstrong,  and 
then  brought  in  some  physical  process  to  reduce  the  strength?  We 
used  the  effective  stress  model,  and  ran  2-D  calculations  which  we 
calibrated  to  pieces  of  data;  Perret's  underground  particle  velocity 


176 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


measurements,  the  geologic  structure,  which  was  a  weak  weathered 
layer,  then  a  layer  where  Perret  measured  the  wave  speeds  to  be 
slightly  less,  and  then  the  working  point  material. 

We  were  able  to  match  all  the  ground  motion  measurements, 
both  underground  and  free  surface,  with  that  model.  The  peaks 
were  a  little  different,  but  the  SRI  data  is  from  a  different  azimuth 
than  the  Perret  data,  and  that  may  explain  it.  We  were  able  to 
match,  with  a  2-D  calculation,  that  data,  but  I  don't  believe  it.  I 
don't  believe  that  effective  stress  is  the  true  model.  I  think  it's  more 
something  that  happens  in  the  joints,  and  that  could  be  tied  in  with 
the  pore  pressure  in  the  joints.  We  had  a  program,  which  DARPA 
funded,  thats  consisted  of  small-scale  explosive  tests  at  SRI,  using  3/ 
8  of  a  gram  of  HE,  to  look  at  this. 

These  were  in  granite  cylinders.  I  was  doing  calculations, 
supervising  the  experiments  that  Alex  Florence  was  doing  up  at  SRI, 
and  having  special  laboratory  material  properties  tests  done  by 
Chris  Schultz,  at  LaMont  Dougherty  Geologic  Observatory  at 
Columbia  University.  In  these  experiments  SRI  was  measuring 
particle  velocities,  looking  at  wet  versus  dry,  where  they  measured 
the  pore  fluid  pressures  preshot. 

We  had  overburden  pressures  on  those  cylinders.  We  put 
everything  in  a  balloon,  pumped  up  the  gas  pressure,  and  then  blew 
the  balloon.  The  granite  just  splintered  into  pieces.  Then  we  put 
lead  shot  around  the  cylinder  to  let  it  go  out  slowly,  and  the  granite 
microfractured.  That  fracture  spacing,  when  the  cube  root  of  the 
yield  was  scaled  up  to  Pile  Driver,  gave  us,  within  a  factor  of  two, 
that  one-foot  joint  spacing.  We  were  trying  to  get  to  the  bottom  of 
this  question,  and  we  spent  three  or  four  years  on  it. 

I  finally  concluded  that  the  strain  rate  effects  in  the  small  scale 
experiments  were  too  great.  They  decreased  the  strength  so  much 
that  they  were  not  relevant  to  Pile  Driver.  However,  they  still 
showed  an  effect  of  water,  but  not  as  strong  an  effect  as  I  believed 
to  be  in-situ. 

As  the  number  of  events  increased  more  and  more  information 
accumulated  about  the  events  that  were  taking  place.  New  people 
joined  the  program,  perhaps  an  old-timer  ot  two  left,  and  there  was 
increasing  difficulty  in  relating  a  current  shot  to  the  experience  on 
an  earlier  one.  What  previous  experience  had  there  been?  Had  there 
been  a  similar  geologic  setting  for  a  shot,  similar  material  proper- 


Earth  Materials  and  Their  Properties  1 77 

ties,  a  similar  yield  at  a  similar  depth?  Eventually  there  was 
recognition  of  the  need  to  bring  together  in  some  accessable  fashion 
what  was  beginning  to  be  a  large  amount  of  data. 

Rambo:  In  the  late  sixties,  while  I  was  still  involved  with  slifer 
measurements,  1  and  a  lady  by  the  name  of  Mary  Lou  Higuera  were 
set  together  in  a  nice  large  room  in  Building  111,  and  told  to  start 
collecting  all  the  data  on  our  shots.  So  we  started  collecting  data, 
and  I  wrote  a  simple  version  of  a  data  base  that  would  work.  I 
decided  what  the  logic  should  be,  and  interestingly  over  the  years 
that  piece  of  logic  has  still  remained  as  one  of  the  ways  of  getting 
the  data  out. 

Carothers:  What  sort  of  things  did  you  have  in  your  data  bank? 

Rambo:  Yield  mostly,  at  first.  The  groups  that  I  was  working 
with  were  very  interested  in  yield,  because  seismic  happened  to  be 
a  big  thing  at  that  time.  So  we  had  different  kinds  of  seismic  yields 
in  there.  The  old  slifer  yields  were  put  in  there  as  sort  of  a 
comparison,  and  there  was  some  thought  of  going  back  and  rework¬ 
ing  all  of  the  old  seismic  data.  And,  it  went  further  than  that.  We 
tried  to  put  a  little  bit  of  geology  in  also. 

Then,  after  Baneberry,  the  tone  of  it  changed  dramatically. 
Then  it  became  very  interesting  as  to  what  caused  things  to  leak,  and 
were  there  any  clues  that  could  be  put  together  to  extrapolate  to 
serious  problems  of  that  sort.  I  recall  the  day  after  Baneberry 
happened,  of  looking  in  the  database,  and  gee,  there  seemed  to  be 
a  definite  correlation  of  shooting  shots  shallower  than  six  hundred 
feet  and  leakages  showing  up.  So  I  wrote  a  very  limited  memo  to 
about  four  or  five  people.  Billy  Hudson  then  took  some  of  that  data 
and  extrapolated  it  in  a  more  formal  sense,  and  that  became  policy. 
Some  of  those  data  bank  runs  that  we  did  in  those  early  days  really 
did  cause  the  development  of  some  of  the  procedures  that  we  use 
nowadays. 

That  data  collection  is  still  being  carried  on.  Now  Los  Alamos 
information  is  included  as  well.  The  two  Laboratories  do  trade  this 
information  to  update  both  of  their  data  banks.  Los  Alamos 
independently  started  a  data  bank  about  the  time  of  Baneberry,  and 
did  find  some  similar  correlations  to  what  we  found. 


178 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Keller:  One  of  the  things  I  did  before  Baneberry  was  to  develop 
a  library  of  shot  data.  So,  I  evolved  the  first  data  bank  at  Los 
Alamos,  and  I  got  it  to  print  out  in  regular  book  format  so  I  could 
trim  the  printouts  and  bind  them.  Then  I  had  a  data  book  in  which 
I  had  all  the  shot  names,  and  the  dates,  and  the  depths  of  burial,  the 
yields,  and  everything  else  that  was  known  about  them.  That  was 
one  of  the  things  that  was  picked  up  very  quickly,  and  they  decided 
to  expand  that  data  book  to  include  all  the  Lab  data  on  the  shots. 
The  device  designers  also  had  their  own  shot  data  book,  but  it  was 
more  crude;  it  had  been  developed  much  earlier. 

At  that  time,  as  I  remember,  there  were  like  72  underground 
events,  total.  And  there  were  only  Los  Alamos  events  included  in 
the  data.  We  didn't  even  think  about  Livermore;  somehow  that  was 
irrelevant  experience.  We  were  really  pretty  parochial.  And  the 
Livermore  data  wasn't  readily  available  either.  So,  1  only  put 
together  those  Los  Alamos  events,  and  I  remember  the  highest  yield 
event  I  had  was  Halfbeak,  and  the  lowest  yield  was  Solendon. 


179 


7 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 

Paul  Fenske,  before  he  turned  to  hydrology,  spent  several  years 
working  for  oil  companies,  doing  logging  on  holes  thought  to  have 
penetrated  an  oil  bearing  formation.  These  were  small  diameter, 
cased,  fluid-filled  holes  often  drilled  to  depths  of  many  thousands 
of  feet.  Here  the  problem  was  not  to  obtain  the  kinds  of  data  about 
rock  properties  needed  for  code  calculations,  but  to  determine 
where,  if  at  all,  the  oil  bearing  regions  were  so  the  casing  could  be 
perforated  there,  and  the  oil  pumped  out. 

Fenske:  There  was  a  standard  set  of  geophysical  logs;  there  was 
a  resistivity  log,  a  neutron  log,  and  what  was  basically  a  conductivity 
log.  It  was  one  of  those  logs  where  you  had  two  coils/and  we 
transmitted  from  one  coil  to  the  other.  The  ability  to  transmit  from 
one  coil  to  the  other  was  given  by  the  conductivity  of  the  formation. 
We  would  run  those  induction  logs,  I  guess  they  would  call  them 
today. 

The  neutron  log  was  a  porosity  log,  essentially.  We  looked  for 
the  hydrogen  content  of  the  rocks.  If  you  have  a  real  clean 
formation  you  would  find  a  difference  between  the  gas  in  the  well, 
and  the  hydrogen  content,  but  most  of  the  time  you  couldn't 
depend  on  that,  because  most  of  the  time  the  formation  wasn't  that 
uniform.  It  wasn't  isotropic  or  homogeneous,  and  so  you  couldn't 
depend  on  that.  There  have  been  a  lot  of  advances  made  in  the  logs, 
how  you  interpret  the  data,  and  what  kind  of  logs  you  use  since  that 
time.  This  was  in  1  952,  and  we  had,  by  today's  technology,  some 
rather  simple  logs;  induction  logs,  neutron  logs,  resistivity  logs. 

We  used  those  for  the  purpose  of  defining  what  the  structure 
was  in  the  area,  and  also  interpreted  them  in  terms  of  where  the  pay 
zones,  the  high  porosity  zones,  were.  Basically,  we  were  trying  to 
determine  if  there  was  porosity  there  or  not.  At  that  time  the  logs 
were  not  good  enough  to  determine  if  there  was  really  oil  there  or 
not.  You  could  tell  if  there  was  porosity,  and  you  could  tell  if  you 
were  dealing  with  a  shale,  or  dealing  with  limestone,  or  sandstone. 
You  could  tell  where  the  formation  tops  were,  and  the  formation 
bottoms,  and  things  like  that.  But  you  could  not  really  tell,  from  the 


180 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


logs,  where  you  had  oil.  What  you  can  do,  because  you  also  run  the 
resistivity  log,  and  oil  is  essentially  a  nonconductor  compared  to 
water,  you  can  by  a  combination  of  those  logs  make  a  pretty  good 
guess  as  to  whether  you  have  oil,  if  you  have  a  combination  of  high 
porosity  and  high  resistivity. 

The  gamma  ray  log,  which  we  also  used,  will  show  you  that  you 
are  not  in  a  shale,  because  shale  has  higher  radioactivity  than  a 
limestone,  for  example.  And,  the  neutron  log  will  show  you  that 
you  have  a  rock  that  has  a  lot  of  holes  in  it  —  high  porosity.  The 
resistivity  log  will  show  that  there  is  something  in  those  holes  other 
than  just  water.  Basically,  the  induction  log  was  better  for  that  than 
a  resistivity  log.  When  you  had  the  induction  log  you  could  do 
pretty  well  in  wells  that  you  knew  something  about.  If  you  were  in 
an  area,  and  you  knew  something  about  the  area  because  you  had 
taken  cores,  and  had  measured  the  porosity,  you  could  do  pretty 
well. 

Joe  Hearst  has  been  a  central  figure  in  the  development  of 
logging  tools  and  methods  at  the  Livermore  Laboratory.  The  initial 
impetus,  at  the  Test  Site,  for  ways  of  determining  the  various  in-situ 
properties  of  different  materials  encountered  in  drill  holes  came 
from  the  Plowshare  program.  In  particular,  the  use  of  nuclear 
explosives  to  form  craters  of  different  sizes  was  envisaged  as  a 
means  for  creating  harbors  and  canals.  To  predict  the  yield  of  the 
explosive  required  at  what  depth  in  a  particular  formation  to  pro¬ 
duce  the  desired  result  required  both  the  development  of  computer 
codes,  and  a  means  of  obtaining  the  the  properties  of  the  rocks 
involved  as  input  data  for  those  codes.  The  oil  companies  had 
developed  various  tools  to  measure  properties  associated  with  the 
presence  of  oil  when  an  exploratory  hole  seeking  an  oil-bearing 
formation  was  drilled,  and  it  was  from  this  base  of  experience  that 
the  development  of  instruments  that  could  be  used  in  the  nuclear 
programs  came. 

Hearst:  When  I  was  working  on  the  Plowshare  program  I  had 
to  calculate  an  event;  I  think  it  was  Danny  Boy,  a  cratering  shot. 
One  of  the  things  you  had  to  put  in  the  code  as  one  of  the  rock 
properties  was  the  sound  speed.  Well,  I  discovered  when  I  was  given 
the  sound  speed  from  laboratory  measurements,  the  calculated 
signal  arrived  at  the  surface  in  about  half  the  time  it  did  in  real  life. 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


181 


I  thought  perhaps  something  was  wrong  with  the  numbers  I'd 
been  given.  So,  I  decided  I  should  go  to  the  field  and  measure  the 
sound  speed.  I  went  to  the  field,  and  I  reinvented  what  is  known  as 
the  uphole  survey.  What  you  do  Is  you  make  a  noise  like  an 
explosion,  underground,  and  you  time  the  signal  coming  to  the 
surface.  I  also  reinvented  the  refraction  survey.  There  you  hit  a 
hammer  on  the  ground  and  listen  to  the  signal  coming  back. 

Of  course,  refraction  surveys  had  been  standard  for  years,  but 
I  didn't  know  that.  I  invented  it  again  out  of  ignorance.  Then  I 
decided  maybe  I  didn't  believe  the  density  numbers  either,  and  I 
believe  that  I  reinvented  the  density  logging  tool,  or  re-conceived 
it,  using  gamma  ray  reflection,  or  gamma  ray  back-scattering. 
That's  how  I  got  into  the  logging  business.  I  had  all  these  numbers 
that  I  didn't  believe,  that  didn't  work,  and  so  I  started  reinventing 
some  of  these  things.  And  then  I  discovered,  first  of  all,  that  there 
was  a  logging  group  at  the  Test  Site,  which  I  hadn't  known  about. 
And,  secondly,  that  there  was  a  logging  industry,  but  I  didn't  know 
that  either,  at  the  time. 

Then,  one  day  -  -  I  was  in  a  ride  pool  with  Don  Rawson,  who 
was  at  the  time  the  head  of  geology  in  K  Division  -  -  Don  said,  "Joe, 
how  would  you  like  to  take  charge  of  logging  for  K  Division,  and  be 
in  charge  of  the  logging  effort  in  Nevada?"  I  almost  said,  "What's 
logging?" 

But  that's  how  I  got  into  it.  I  needed  the  data.  I  don't 
remember  when  I  found  out  about  the  logging  group  in  Nevada,  but 
at  first  I  didn't  even  know  about  them.  They  were  developing 
seismic  measurements,  and  improving  on  them,  and  they  were  using 
commercial  logging  companies,  which  I  had  never  heard  of,  like 
Birdwell,  and  Wellex.  I  was  reinventing  all  this  stuff  in  a  vacuum. 

Carothers:  One  of  the  things  researchers  are  supposed  to  do 
is  look  at  the  literature,  Joe. 

Hearst:  I  didn't  even  know  there  was  a  literature. 

The  logging  people  that  I  knew  in  Nevada  were  in  support  of 
Plowshare,  because  the  Plowshare  people  were  interested  in  break¬ 
ing  up  the  rocks,  and  when  or  where  the  signal  came  to  the  surface. 
They  were  doing  cratering  shots,  and  they  were  worried  about 
damage,  and  earthquakes.  The  Panama  Canal  effort  was  what  was 
funding  all  this,  so  that  was  what  the  Nevada  group  was  working  on. 


182 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Rambo:  In  the  Nevada  group  we  were  trying  to  develop  new 
logging  tools.  And,  we  were  evaluating  the  commercially  available 
tools  from  Birdwell,  and  I  think  Wellex.  We  weren't  very  happy  with 
what  we  were  seeing,  because  those  tools  were  all  borrowed  from 
the  oil  patch,  and  those  people  were  not  interested  in  the  same 
things  we  were,  at  the  time.  We  were  interested  more  in  physical 
properties  than  in  blips  on  an  electric  log.  On  the  cratering  events 
we  were  able  to  drill  a  lot  of  holes  and  pull  out  samples,  and  make 
measurements  on  those,  and  get  material  properties  in  that  way. 

So,  during  this  time  we  were  developing  logging  tools  to 
measure  these  unknowns,  and  density  was  one  of  the  big  items  we 
were  looking  at.  We  had  just  gotten  one  of  the  old  1620  IBM 
computers,  and  that  was  a  miracle  machine  at  that  time.  I  learned 
all  about  programming  that.  We  bought  the  second  version  of  the 
Rand  Tablet,  which  was  a  digitizing  device,  which  had  etched  lines 
on  it.  I  had  a  stylus,  and  you  could  digitize  logs  with  this  electronic 
pencil.  For  every  point  you  got,  it  would  punch  a  number  in  a  piece 
of  paper  tape.  So,  I  wrote  programs  to  do  this  translation,  and  I 
wrote  the  programs  for  the  IBM  1 620.  We  would  put  on  a  reel  of 
paper  tape  that  was  maybe  about  eight  to  ten  inches  in  diameter, 
turn  it  on  just  before  we  went  home,  and  this  thing  would  run  all 
night  long  digitizing  a  density  log.  Then  we'd  process  it  in  a  Cal 
Comp  plotter,  which  was  an  old  version  of  a  plotter,  and  convert 
what  was  kilocounts  at  one  time  to  density,  which  was  the  real  thing. 

Carothers:  What  was  the  source  of  the  input  data?  What  kind 
of  an  instrument  were  you  using? 

Rambo:  What  it  was  for  the  density  log  was  a  cobalt  60  source. 
The  gammas  would  backscatter  from  the  formation  after  the  source 
was  held  up  against  the  wall  of  a  hole  at  various  locations.  It  was  a 
gamma-gamma  density;  the  backscatter  was  the  indication  of  the 
density.  I  forget  whether  there  was  two  or  three  feet  of  separation 
between  the  sensor  and  receiver.  You  couldn't  get  the  receiver  too 
far  away,  or  you  wouldn't  sense  anything;  if  it  was  too  close  you'd 
only  sense  the  source.  You  then  had  to  go  through  various 
calibrations  to  get  the  density. 

We  were  also  dealing  at  that  time  with  a  firm  called  Birdwell, 
which  was  big  in  the  logging  field,  and  which  did  the  Test  Site 
logging.  We  were  trying  to  do  our  processing  in-house,  and  to 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


183 


develop  a  whole  logging  program.  That  eventually  became  the 
modern  logging  programming  we  now  have.  Those  were  the  early 
days  of  developing  those  sort  of  things. 

Carothers:  Why  didn't  the  Lab  use  the  commercial  tools?  Why 
build  up  an  in-house  logging  capability?  There  were  companies  that 
had  logged  hundreds  of  miles  of  holes. 

Hearst:  Because  the  conditions  were  different.  The  commer¬ 
cial  tools  were  developed  for  deep,  small  holes  that  would  be  fluid- 
filled  because  they  were  below  the  water  table.  We  were  logging  in 
emplacement  holes,  so  first  of  all,  we  were  logging  above  the  water 
table,  and  almost  all  commercial  tools  were,  and  are,  designed  to 
work  in  water-filled  holes,  or  liquid-filled  holes. 

When  we  were  trying  to  do  seismic  surveys,  at  first  we  tried  to 
couple  them  with  water.  We'd  drill  an  eight-inch  hole,  dump  a 
truckload  of  water  into  it,  and  it  would  flush  like  a  toilet.  We  learned 
you  can't  do  that.  Even  for  seismic  surveys  we  had  to  develop  a  new 
method  of  stemming  with  sand  and  things  like  that,  because  the 
commercial  methods  wouldn't  work  in  the  holes  we  had. 

So,  we  needed  methods  for  a  dry  hole,  and  a  big  hole.  First  a 
dry  hole.  For  Plowshare  we  didn't  need  big  hole  tools,  we  needed 
dry  hole  tools.  And  so  we  developed  dry  hole  methods.  We  also 
needed  higher  accuracy  for  many  of  these  things  than  was  available 
from  the  commercial  tools  at  the  time.  First  of  all,  velocity;  our  first 
paper  was  on  an  uphole  survey,  which  was  a  standard  procedure, 
which  was  an  order  of  magnitude  higher  accuracy  than  industry 
used.  For  the  short  distances  which  were  used  on  the  cratering 
shots,  we  needed  the  higher  accuracy.  Or,  at  least  we  thought  we 
did.  For  density,  we  had  rough,  dry  holes,  and  we  had  to  develop 
tools  that  would  work  in  them. 

The  first  thing  we  worked  on  was  a  lock-in  geophone,  to  get 
better  accuracy  in  measuring  velocities.  I  didn't  work  on  that  much; 
that  was  done  by  Dick  Carlson  and  the  people  in  Nevada.  We  used 
that  for  downhole  surveys  rather  than  uphole.  The  geophones 
would  lock  into  the  borehole,  and  measure  the  travel  time  from  an 
HE  shot  on  the  surface.  We  were  measuring  the  sound  speed  for  the 
code  calculations.  One  of  the  reasons  for  that  is  that  laboratory 
measurements  on  samples,  especially  for  sound  speed,  have  nothing 
to  do  with  field  measurements. 


184 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


For  laboratory  measurements  you  take  a  core  sample,  a  nice 
solid  core  which  doesn't  have  any  cracks  in  it,  and  which  doesn't  fail 
apart.  In  the  field  things  aren't  like  that.  I  remember  the  Sulky 
event,  where  you  could  look  down  the  hole  and  see  cracks  you  could 
put  your  arm  into.  And  of  course,  the  acoustic  signal  has  to  come 
through  that  broken  up,  fractured  material.  The  Test  Site  is  very 
nasty  that  way.  And,  the  fractures  at  the  T est  Site  are  not  filled  with 
water  —  they're  filled  with  air,  which  gives  a  tremendous  attenua¬ 
tion  for  acoustic  signals.  That's  why  we  had  to  make  those 
measurements  with  the  geophones.  There  is  that  factor  of  two  that 
I  mentioned,  between  the  laboratory  and  field  measurements. 
People  still  fall  into  that  trap  sometimes. 

Don  Larsen  developed  some  very  thin  velocity  gauges,  and  we 
then  could  look  at  the  velocity  history  of  rock  samples  in  the  lab, 
using  very  small  HE  charges.  We  also  worked  a  lot  on  stress  gauges, 
and  we're  still  working  on  them.  Checking  calculations  with  actual 
measurements  is  a  lifetime  program. 

Carothers:  The  Buggy  event,  which  used  five  simultaneous 
detonations,  was  a  great  success,  in  that  it  made  a  real  ditch.  It 
demonstrated  that  you  could  actually  calculate  these  row  charge 
effects. 

Hearst:  Before  Buggy  was  Palanquin,  which  demonstrated  you 
couldn't  calculate  everything. 

Carothers:  The  only  real  work  that  was  being  done  was  being 
done  for  Plowshare,  and  basically  being  done  for  the  cratering  shots. 
Now,  the  Plowshare  people  had  various  other  ideas,  such  gas 
stimulation.  Did  you  do  any  work  on  those  kind  of  things? 

Hearst:  Logging  was  logging,  but  for  most  of  the  other  things 
commercial  logs  could  be  used.  Another  thing  was  verification. 
There  was  Salmon,  in  Mississippi,  and  Dick  Carlson  especially  did  a 
lot  of  logging  work  on  Salmon.  In  the  second  place,  on  Salmon,  if 
you  recall,  the  ground  shock  caused  much  more  damage  to  buildings 
than  people  had  anticipated.  It  was  a  real  surprise.  We  then  started 
bringing  seismic  people  into  our  group,  and  we  started  getting 
involved  in  what  we  would  now  call  verification  work.  We  then  did 
logging  for  that,  as  well  as  calculations  and  lab  experiments. 

Carothers:  On  device  development  shots,  as  differentiated 
from  Plowshare  events,  were  there  samples  or  logs  taken? 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools  1 85 

Hearst:  I  don't  think  the  test  program  people  did  much  of  that. 
We  didn't  get  involved  with  the  test  program  until  Baneberry. 
Plowshare  was  vanishing,  and  the  Lab  also  had  the  first  big  reduc¬ 
tion-in-force.  Just  about  that  time,  very  providentially,  along  came 
Baneberry,  and  that  put  us  back  in  business,  logging  for  the  test 
program.  I  was  still  doing  calculations  at  that  time. 

Carothers:  What  logs  could  you  do  at  that  time? 

Hearst:  We  could  do  almost  anything  that  we  can  do  now. 
There  were  very  sophisticated  acoustic  things,  which  weren't  useful 
at  the  Test  Site,  but  as  soon  as  we  started  working  on  verification, 
then  we  could  use  the  conventional  stuff  for  things  like  Salmon  and 
Sterling,  and  so  on.  I  recall  doing  lots  of  seismic  surveys  on  Pahute 
Mesa  events,  and  I  think  it  was  pre-Baneberry. 

Now,  the  quality  wasn't  as  good.  The  measurements  weren't 
as  sophisticated  as  they  are  today,  but  the  techniques  were  available 
in  the  sixties.  There's  very  little  new  that  has  come  along  since  then. 
The  only  thing,  really,  is  borehole  gravity,  which  was  conceived  in 
the  fifties,  but  not  used  in  the  field  until  later.  And  it's  still  not  very 
commercial.  You  could,  in  the  sixties,  do  acoustic,  density, 
electrical  logs. 

The  epithermal  neutron  log  was  a  commercial  tool;  we  just 
used  it.  We  did  invent  one  density  logging  tool,  which  was  for 
Plowshare,  and  we  subsequently  stopped  using  it.  It  was  a  rugosity 
insensitive  density  logging  tool.  When  we  got  into  bigger  holes  we 
stopped  using  it,  and  started  using  commercial  tools,  and  calibrating 
them,  and  living  with  the  rugosity  effects. 

So,  it  was  all  commercial  tools,  and  we  had  to  make  them  work. 
That  was  the  switch  from  Plowshare  to  verification  and  test.  We 
started  making  commercial  tools  work.  The  only  tool  we  developed 
that  is  still  in  use  is  the  dry-hole  acoustic  log.  The  other  tools  could 
be  made  to  work;  basically,  they  had  to  be  calibrated  for  dry  holes. 
The  thing  that  I  did  with  the  epithermal  neutron  tool  was,  after 
many  years  of  effort,  and  learning  to  run  Monte  Carlo  codes,  and 
things  like  that,  was  to  convince  management  to  build  me  a 
calibrator  for  dry  holes.  It  was  boxes  of  carefully  mixed  materials, 
and  those  boxes  are  expensive. 

Carothers:  Boxes  with  dirt  in  them? 


1 86  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Hearst:  They  had  to  be  big  boxes,  because  the  neutrons  go  long 
distances.  And  the  dirt  had  to  be  carefully  designed  to  give  you 
what  you  wanted,  and  to  give  it  uniformly  and  accurately.  Actually, 
that  calibrator  didn't  work  very  well. 

What  we  ended  up  doing,  because  of  engineering  and  money 
constraints,  was,  we  made  cells  a  foot  square  and  six  feet  high  so  we 
could  put  them  together  to  make  a  rectangular  parallelepiped,  to  be 
technical,  which  was  six  feet  high,  by  three  feet  by  five  feet. 
Basically  it  was  a  slab. 

We  put  carefully  measured  amounts  of  material  in  each  one  of 
the  boxes,  and  shook  them  to  get  it  uniform.  We  calculated  what 
materials  we  needed,  and  mixed  them.  We  used  sand,  and  marbles 

-  -  we  actually  had  a  million  marbles,  a  whole  truck  load  of  marbles 

-  -  and  aluminum  oxide.  Among  other  things  we  had  to  control  the 
density,  and  so  we  had  to  make  mixes  of  materials  of  different  sizes 
to  get  it  dense  enough  to  do  what  we  wanted.  We  used  marbles,  and 
sand  to  get  higher  densities.  And  aluminum  oxide,  to  get  even 
higher  densities.  To  a  neutron,  aluminum  looks  very  much  like 
silicon.  Then  we  poured  in  water,  and  we  also  had  some  activated 
alumina,  which  could  soak  up  some  water. 

We  did  all  that,  and  it  was  still  not  well  done.  Part  of  the 
problem  was  that  the  mixes  were  made  here,  and  they  were  sealed 
in  these  aluminum  cans,  and  then  they  were  trucked  over  the  Sierra. 
That  made  the  cans  expand,  because  of  the  low  pressure  as  they 
went  over  the  mountains.  And  so,  when  the  cans  got  to  Nevada  they 
were  bulging.  Consequently,  they  never  fit  well  together. 

Carothers:  All  you  had  to  do  was  to  put  a  little  pinhole  in  them. 

Hearst:  They  didn't  think  of  it.  Remember,  they  were  sealed 
to  keep  the  water  in  there.  There  were  actually  reinforcing  rods  in 
them,  but  that  didn't  work  well  enough,  and  so  they  bulged.  When 
you  put  them  together  and  squeezed  as  hard  as  you  could,  they  still 
weren't  flat;  they  had  gaps,  and  bumps,  and  wiggles.  And  so,  they 
were  never  satisfactory.  But  it  took  a  lot  of  persuasion  to  get 
management  to  let  me  build  that  facility,  and  that  was  what  I 
contributed  —  the  calibration  facility. 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


187 


There  were  problems  with  our  first  calibrations.  We  did  two 
procedures.  Our  main  effort,  which  was  to  simulate  a  big  hole,  was 
this  three  by  five  foot  wall.  And,  we  took  one  box  out  of  the  middle 
of  the  fifteen  boxes  to  mock  up  a  small  hole;  that  hole,  of  course, 
was  square. 

Those  results  are  quite  different  from  those  in  the  small 
cylindrical  hole  we  now  have  in  our  in  our  new  calibrator.  A  logging 
tool  is  cylindrical,  and  is  up  against  a  wall  that  is  either  cylindrical 
or  flat,  and  the  major  effect  is  right  in  the  front  of  the  tool.  One 
of  the  things  we  discovered  was  that  even  in  a  72-inch  hole  there 
is  a  hole-size  effect  on  a  neutron  log.  That's  why  we  had  to  build 
this  ENS  —  the  Epithermal  Neutron  Special,  instead  of  the  ENP  — 
the  Epithermal  Neutron  Porosity  —  to  take  care  of  the  hole-size 
effect.  The  Geologic  Survey  people  are  unhappy  because  we  almost 
always  get  higher  values  with  the  ENS. 

The  ENS  was  special  because  it  had  more  shielding.  We  put 
that  bigger  shielding  on  to  compensate  because  we  were  up  against 
the  slab.  The  slab  was  to  simulate  the  big  hole  —  infinite  radius.  But 
because  it  wasn't  right,  wasn't  really  effectively  infinite,  we  had  to 
put  in  this  extra  shielding.  We  also  pulled  out  one  of  the  boxes  in 
the  middle  to  simulate  a  small  hole.  Now  that  we've  built  our  new 
system,  we've  found  that  neither  of  those  simulations  is  particularly 
good. 

Our  new  calibrator  is  two  cylinders,  fifteen  feet  in  diameter, 
with  a  six  foot  diameter  hole  in  the  middle.  They  are  vertical 
cylinders,  six  or  eight  feet  highland  somewhere  between  twelve  and 
fifteen  feet  outside  diameter,  with  a  six  foot  diameter  hole  in  the 
middle.  They  are  made  of  pie-shaped  wedges;  each  of  the  two 
cylinders  has  six  cells  filled  with  the  material.  It  cost  us  like  a  quarter 
of  a  million  dollars  to  fill  them  —  REECO  prices.  You  have  to  fill 
them  very,  very  carefully,  and  we  did  a  lot  of  studying  of  the  mixing 
of  solids.  We  even  sent  our  engineer  to  a  meeting  on  the  subject, 
in  Southern  California.  We  came  to  the  conclusion  that  we  could 
not  make  uniform  mixes  of  the  solids  we  wanted  to  mix.  The 
technology  does  not  exist  to  make  good  uniform  mixes  of  solids  of 
different  sizes,  or  even  of  the  same  size. 

Carothers:  My  mother  can  do  that  when  she  makes  sticky  buns 
with  raisins  in  them.  She  gets  a  pretty  uniform  mix. 


1 88  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Hearst:  Well,  probably  on  that  scale  you  can  do  it.  But  we 
concluded  that  we  just  could  not  guarantee  a  uniform  mix,  with  dry 
particulates.  So  what  we  did  was,  we  made  layers.  Each  cell  has 
fifteen  layers,  and  we  know  what's  in  each  layer,  so  we  know  that 
at  least  on  that  scale  the  mix  is  uniform.  We  use  fifteen  layers  of  the 
same  mix.  The  layers  may  not  each  be  completely  homogeneous, 
but  the  neutrons  see  more  than  one  layer. 

The  layers  are  all  the  same  recipe,  mixed  in  a  concrete  mixer. 
The  problem  is  that  the  concrete  mixer  may  not  necessarily  get 
things  uniform,  but  it  makes  it  uniform  on  the  scale  that  the 
neutrons  see.  We  put  these  mixes  in  place,  and  then  vibrated  the 
cells  to  get  the  right  density,  because  we  had  to  have  a  known 
density  as  well  as  a  known  water  content.  So,  we  vibrated  these  huge 
cells  each  time  we  put  in  a  layer,  to  settle  it  to  get  the  right  density. 
We  did  all  sorts  of  experiments  on  that  sort  of  thing.  We  did 
experiments  where  we  would  pour  stuff  into  a  container  after  we 
mixed  it,  then  shake  it  to  settle  it  to  get  the  right  density,  and  it 
would  separate. 

Carothers:  Well,  sure.  The  heavy  things  fall  down  to  the 
bottom.  It's  the  shaking  that's  doing  it. 

Hearst:  Yes,  but  otherwise  you  can't  get  the  right  density.  So, 
it's  probably  still  not  uniform.  Afterwards  we  made  all  kinds  of 
measurements  with  logging  tools,  and  other  things.  I've  got  a  book 
an  inch  and  a  half  thick  describing  these  mixes.  How  to  mix  solids 
is  an  unsolved  problem,  and  there  are  conferences  on  the  subject. 
It's  important  to  places  like  cookie  companies,  and  places  like  that. 

I  think  the  solution  is  that  you  put  in  liquid,  and  then  you  can 
mix  it.  If  you  make  a  slurry  you  can  mix  it,  apparently.  But  as  long 
as  it's  a  dry  solid,  you  can't.  That  seems  to  be  the  story.  This  was 
a  major  problem  that  we  spent  a  lot  of  time  and  money  on. 

There  are  calibration  facilities  at  places  like  Bendix,  in  Grand 
Junction,  where  they  tried  to  make  mixes  of  radioactive  concrete  to 
calibrate  gamma  ray  logs.  It  took  them  years  to  discover  that  they 
got  it  wrong.  There  are  American  Petroleum  Institute  test  pits  in 
Houston  that  are  not  right,  because  they  couldn't  mix  it  well; 
they're  not  uniform.  Mixes  just  don't  do  very  well,  and  these  test 
pits  where  they  tried  to  mix  radioactive  concrete  don't  work.  And 
so,  when  we  built  our  gamma  ray  calibrator  we  used  six  foot  high, 
three  foot  diameter  pieces  of  granite. 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


189 


Commercial  tools  are  calibrated  in  American  Petroleum  test 
beds  in  Houston,  in  saturated  limestone,  and  things  like  that.  They 
are  small,  water-filled  holes,  and  we  have  dry  big  holes,  and  dry 
small  holes.  And  so,  we  had  to  simulate  that.  And  also,  we  have 
a  much  bigger  range  of  water  contents  and  densities.  One  thing  that 
I  did  invent  was  the  idea  that  you  had  to  compensate  the  neutron 
log  for  density.  That's  not  a  problem  in  the  oil  industry,  because 
any  time  there's  a  density  change  there  is  also  a  water  content 
change,  because  everything  is  saturated.  The  holes  they  log  are 
deep,  and  also  they're  in  places  where  there  is  a  shallow  water  table. 

So,  we  had  to  develop  calibrations  to  account  for  that,  and  we 
did.  We  developed  ways  of  correcting  for  ail  those  features  they 
don't  worry  about  in  industry.  We  didn't  have  to  develop  tools,  we 
just  had  to  develop  calibrations  and  corrections;  ways  to  use  those 
tools.  That  saved  lots  of  effort. 

Carothers:  This  new  calibrator  you  have  is  bigger,  better,  and 
so  forth  compared  to  the  old  square  cells.  Presumably  it  was  more 
expensive  also.  How  was  the  management  persuaded  to  spend  that 
quarter  of  a  million  dollars? 

Hearst:  Actually,  it  ended  up  being  more  expensive  than  that. 
But,  partly  it  was  the  DOE  management  that  spent  it.  I  think  we 
succeeded  because  there  is  still  the  tradition  of  getting  better  data, 
and  because  there  was  money  in  the  budget,  the  DOE  budget,  to  do 
these  things. 

When  I  was  working  with  Frank  Morrison  1  was  in  charge  of 
research  for  the  containment  program.  I  had  lunch  with  Frank  one 
day  at  the  bowling  alley  at  the  Test  Site.  I  said,  "Frank,  we  don't 
need  any  more  research  in  the  containment  program.  We're  doing 
our  job,  and  we're  not  hurting.  We  have  a  budget,  and  there  lot's 
of  interesting  things  we  could  do  that  would  give  us  more  accurate 
measurements  —  nicer,  warmer  fuzzy  feelings  —  but  they  don't 
improve  the  containment  of  the  event  one  bit." 

Carothers:  I  was  wondering  if  there  was  something  new  that 
had  occurred;  if  for  some  reason  better  numbers  were  needed.  For 
instance,  perhaps  the  verification  folks  needed  better  numbers. 


190  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Hearst:  No.  There  was  available  money,  and  we  could  show 
the  things  that  were  wrong  with  the  existing  calibrator.  So,  we  have 
better  data  now.  This  business  of  the  correction  for  the  bound 
water,  that's  an  improvement  in  the  correctness  of  the  numbers, 
even  though  it's  not  very  important. 

Carothers:  Your  epithermal  neutron  log  doesn't  really  mea¬ 
sure  water;  it  measures  the  hydrogen  that  makes  up  the  water.  And 
you  assume  that  all  the  hydrogen  is  associated  with  water. 

Hearst:  That's  correct. 

Carothers:  Well,  your  measurements  seem  to  bother  the 
geologists,  because  you  measure  not  only  the  free  water,  but  the 
bound  water.  As  far  as  I  know,  they  measure  the  free  water.  They 
never  measure  the  bound  water. 

Hearst:  That's  correct,  but  they  could  if  they  tried.  They 
measure  the  water  in  samples,  and  if  you  heat  the  samples  hot 
enough  the  bound  water  will  come  off. 

Carothers:  But  the  problem  is  that  all  the  data  in  the  data  banks 
that  we  have  that  relate  to  the  Test  Site  only  report  the  free  water. 
Now  you're  reporting  free  water  and  bound  water,  and  so  there's 
always  more  than  there  is  reported  in  the  data  bank. 

Hearst:  Not  always.  Only  in  places  where  there  is  water  that 
is  bound,  and  that's  in  zeolitic  materials,  as  far  as  I  know.  Or  clays, 
or  things  that  have  some  clay  in  them.  But  yes,  the  neutron  log 
seems  to  give  higher  values  than  the  sample  data,  and  generally  it 
should.  That  should  only  happen  where  there's  bound  water.  But, 
we  have  a  method  for  correcting  for  bound  water.  We  can  measure 
it  with  nuclear  magnetic  resonance  —  from  samples  only,  which  is 
a  little  bit  cheating,  as  a  reviewer  from  a  journal  pointed  out  to  me. 
It's  cheating  to  interpolate  between  samples.  There  is  nuclear 
magnetic  resonance  logging,  but  it's  never  been  successful.  I 
recently  read  a  proposal  for  something  that  might  work,  but  they 
aren't  there  yet.  That  tool  has  also  existed  since  the  sixties,  but  it's 
never  been  very  good,  and  it  certainly  wouldn't  work  in  big  holes. 

But  there  is  a  problem  there,  and  I'm  not  sure  the  solution  is 
complete;  that  is,  that  we  can  explain  away  all  the  differences 
between  the  sample  measurements  and  the  log  measurements.  But, 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


191 


we  think  we  understand  most  of  it,  and  yes,  the  data  bank  does  have 
just  the  free  water,  and  we  can  now  compare  free  water  measure¬ 
ments  if  we  wish. 

Carothers:  But  you  do  that  by  cheating  a  little  bit. 

Hearst:  Yes.  Incidently,  the  epithermal  neutron  log  was  a 
Birdwell  tool.  It  was  abandoned  by  the  industry,  because  it  didn't 
get  enough  signal,  until  very  recently.  Now  epithermal  neutron  logs 
are  coming  back  into  fashion  in  industry,  and  they  are  using  them 
in  creative  ways.  Maybe  it's  just  more  recognition  of  neutron 
poisons,  which  is  the  reason  we  used  epithermal  neutrons  —  the  fact 
that  there  are  things  out  there  that  absorb  thermal  neutrons.  And 
maybe  it's  that  industry  is  getting  into  more  materials  where  they 
care  about  it.  But  also  they've  found  constructive  ways  of  using  the 
tool. 

The  problem,  with  the  neutron  log  in  particular,  and  the 
density  log,  is  that  our  calibration  at  zero  gap,  and  even  at  a  small 
gap,  is  excellent.  But  the  correction  for  gap,  when  we  measure  some 
gap,  is  still  very  poor,  because  we're  doing  that  badly,  somehow.  I 
don't  know  why.  I  think  it's  poor  because  I'm  measuring  the  gap 
at  some  place  other  than  the  spot  where  I'm  making  the  neutron 
measurement.  The  hole  is  rough,  and  we're  making  the  measure¬ 
ment  a  foot  away  from  the  source,  because  the  gap  measuring  device 
is  somewhere  else  on  the  tool.  That  isn't  right,  but  we  don't  know 
how  to  do  it  otherwise.  We're  probably  getting  the  water  content 
wrong;  we're  probably  overestimating  it  in  many  cases. 

Carothers:  There  are  members  of  the  Panel  who  have  said  that 
they  really  don't  care  about  all  those  numbers,  and  the  geology, 
unless  there  is  something  unusual  about  it.  For  instance,  they,  and 
I,  feel  that  the  histograms  of  material  properties  that  are  presented 
are  meaningless,  because  there  have  been  so  many  measurements 
taken  that  what  is  at  the  Test  Site  has  been  bracketed,  and  what  you 
measure  always  falls  within  those  limits. 

Hearst:  Yes.  Of  course.  Norm  Burkhard  gave  a  paper  at  the 
containment  symposium  before  last  about  the  rockpile  concept  — 
you  should  just  assume  these  numbers.  I  think  that's  quite  reason¬ 
able. 


192 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  In  1 978  there  was  a  session  of  the  Panel  called  to 
consider  the  question  posed  by  Ink  Gates,  the  then  NV O  Manager, 
as  to  whether  there  were  ways  to  reduce  the  containment  related 
costs.  Without  compromising  the  probability  of  successful 
containment,  of  course. 

One  of  the  suggestions  that  was  made  in  1978  was  that 
Livermore  should  regard  a  large  section  of  the  areas  they  used  in 
Yucca  Flat  as  LANL  regards  the  Sandpile  —  call  it  the  gravel  pile, 
or  whatever.  There  is  plenty  of  data  to  do  that,  and  when  a  new  hole 
is  drilled,  just  extrapolate  in  the  data  from  adjacent  holes.  The 
Livermore  Laboratory,  for  whatever  reason,  has  not  chosen  to  do 
that. 

Hearst:  In  20ax,  the  containment  scientist  wanted  to  do  that, 
and  suggested  that  we  look  at  the  20ax  data  and  compare  them  to 
the  data  from  nearby  holes.  We  did  actually  try  that  for  that  event. 
Well,  it  turned  out  that  in  many  of  the  lithologic  units  the  error  bars 
for  the  measured  20ax  data  lay  outside  the  error  bars  for  the  nearby 
data.  They  didn't  agree.  But,  so  what? 

Carothers:  I  don't  believe,  these  days,  that  the  CEP  is  the 
organization  that  drives  the  data  collection.  You've  got  people  who 
do  calculations,  and  to  do  calculations  you  have  to  have  numbers, 
and  if  you  don't  have  numbers  people  criticize  you  for  having  so 
many  knobs  to  twiddle  in  your  code  that  the  results  are  meaningless. 
And  so,  you  have  to  have  numbers.  And  to  get  the  numbers  you 
either  have  to  have  samples,  or  logging  tools.  Samples  are  expen¬ 
sive. 

Hearst:  And  they're  not  very  good  anyhow. 

Carothers:  So,  we  have  to  have  logging  tools,  so  we  have  to 
have  people  to  do  that. 

Hearst:  I  consider  it  a  ritual,  but  I  earn  my  living  at  it,  and  it's 
interesting  work.  As  long  as  you're  going  to  do  it  you  might  as  well 
try  to  do  it  well.  Although,  we  wouldn't  use  the  tools  we  are  using 
if  we  were  starting  now;  we'd  use  higher  technology.  We're  still 
using  1 960's  technology  in  much  of  our  stuff  at  the  Test  Site. 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools  193 

Carothers:  With  a  logging  tool  there  are  two  things  you  can  do, 
and  presumably  you  could  do  them  both  at  once.  One  is,  you  might 
not  care  what  the  absolute  value  is;  you  might  only  care  about  where 
and  how  the  value  changes.  The  other  is  that  you  really  want  to 
know  what  the  absolute  value  is.  How  do  you  deal  with  that? 

Hearst:  Well,  in  the  first  place,  you  should  actually  design  the 
tool  differently  for  the  two  different  uses.  For  almost  any  tool,  the 
larger  the  source-detector  spacing  the  further  you're  averaging 
over,  so  the  more  accurate  number  you're  going  to  get,  but  the  less 
definition  you're  going  to  get  of  a  boundary.  There  is  a  basic 
problem,  before  you  start  a  logging  program,  of  deciding  what  you 
want,  and  why.  There's  always  a  balance  between  accuracy  of  the 
value  and  accuracy  of  the  depth,  which  compete,  and  cost. 

For  the  Soviet  test  site  a  U.S.  committee  got  together  and 
decided  what  logs  they  wanted  to  verify  Soviet  tests.  There  was  this 
list  of  logs  that  were  wanted,  and  we  made  decisions  about  the 
necessary  logging  tools  to  send  over  to  Russia.  This  commitee  would 
say,  "We  want  these  logs."  And  maybe,  "We  want  them  to  this 
accuracy,"  but  usually  not.  But  not,  "We  want  them  because."  The 
cortex  people  wanted  them  for  one  thing,  the  Geological  Survey 
wanted  them  for  another  thing.  The  first  time  people  went  over 
there  they  spent  a  great  deal  of  money,  and  effort,  and  time  getting 
these  data.  And,  nobody  has  ever  used  the  data,  as  far  as  I  can  tell. 

Carothers:  Why  do  you  think  that  is? 

Hearst:  I  don't  know.  Probably  they  didn't  think  it  through. 
Dick  Carlson  is  the  guy  who  went  to  Russia  to  do  it,  and  the  last  time 
I  talked  to  him  nobody  had  ever  made  any  use  of  his  work.  And  he 
does  a  very  good  job  of  getting  good  data. 

It's  very  difficult  to  persuade  people,  including  the  CEP,  to 
think  hard  about  what  numbers  they  want,  to  what  accuracy,  and 
why.  You  can  say,  "I  want  the  density  to  two  percent  accuracy  over 
the  range."  Then  I  come  back  and  say,  "Why?  What  are  you  going 
to  do  with  those  numbers?  That's  very  expensive.  If  you  really 
mean  you  want  that  accuracy,  I  probably  would  want  to  run  three 
different  tools.  But,  you  probably  don't  really  mean  that,  because 
you're  not  going  to  use  those  numbers  that  accurately." 


194 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Each  person,  each  organization  will  say,  "I  need  this  measure¬ 
ment,"  and  they  will  always  specify  some  accuracy  which  is  good  as 
they  could  possibly  use,  without  ever  thinking  how  difficult  they 
make  it  to  get  the  data,  and  how  much  more  costly  it  is,  and  how 
it's  competing  with  someone  else's  desires.  You  really  have  to  think 
about  what  you're  going  to  do  with  those  numbers. 

Let  me  say,  the  CEP  doesn't  need  accurate  numbers.  They're 
just  talking  about  how  their  grandfather  did  it,  and  10%  accuracy 
would  be  wonderful  for  them.  We  put  big  error  bars  on  the  data  we 
present,  and  nobody  cares. 

Carothers:  Well,  in  defense  of  the  CEP,  I  constituted  a 
subcommittee  of  the  CEP  a  number  of  years  ago,  chaired  by  Bill 
Twenhofel.  It  was  called  the  Data  Needs  Subcommittee.  That 
subcommittee  came  back  and  said  the  CEP  didn't  need  various  kinds 
of  data.  The  Laboratories  paid  no  attention  at  all,  and  continued  to 
get  those  data  anyway.  Why?  Weil,  they've  got  guys  like  Joe 
Hearst,  and  John  Rambo,  and  Fred  App  who  are  calculating  various 
things,  and  they  want  numbers. 

Hearst:  That's  right.  Calculators  need  numbers.  But  I  think 
we  are  getting  data  that  are  too  accurate.  Or  too  precise  —  they 
are  probably  not  that  accurate.  I  think  we  are  wasting  time  with  too 
many  decimal  places  which  nobody  uses. 

Carothers:  You  now  have  a  tool  that  measures  the  hydrogen 
in  the  rock,  and  you  assume  all  the  hydrogen  is  there  as  water,  so 
let's  say  you  measure  the  water  in  the  rock.  Why  did  you  develop 
a  tool  to  do  that? 

Hearst:  We  didn't.  We  hired  it.  That's  the  tool  that  was 
available.  Butalso,  one  of  the  important  parameters  for  containment 
is  the  total  water.  That's  one  of  the  key  parameters,  and  if  you  need 
to  know  numbers  at  all,  that's  one  of  the  numbers  you  need  to  know. 
When  we  first  started  we  looked  at  the  available  methods  of 
measuring  water  content,  and  decided  this  was  the  best.  But  we 
didn't  want  to  measure  only  free  water.  We'll  continue  to  report 
total  water  and  these  other  parameters,  the  porosity  and  saturation, 
which  the  whole  world  tries  to  measure,  by  the  way.  The  objective 
of  the  industry  in  running  all  these  logging  tools  is  to  measure 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


195 


porosity  and  saturation.  That's  what  the  tools  are  built  for;  that's 
what  they  were  invented  for.  Ail  those  methods  assume  that  the 
formation  is  saturated  with  some  conductive  liquid. 

We  looked  at  density  tools,  and  we  just  demonstrated  that 
these  tools  are  worthless  in  the  seventeen-inch  holes  for  the 
groundwater  characterization  program.  We've  shown  that  they're 
not  good.  For  20ax  we  had  problems  with  a  density  tool  in  a 
seventeen-inch  hole,  and  we  had  to  build  a  new  calibrator  for  it. 
This  was  blocks  of  various  metals  like  aluminum  and  magnesium. 
That's  the  way  you  calibrate  a  density  tool,  and  that's  one  reason 
density  tools  are  much  easier  to  calibrate.  We  discovered  that  these 
automatic,  two-receiver  compensated  density  tools  get  wrong  an¬ 
swers  if  they  are  tilted  ever  so  slightly  in  a  seventeen-inch  hole. 
They  work  all  right  in  an  eight-inch  hole,  which  is  what  they  were 
designed  for,  but  they  have  to  be  recalibrated  for  the  bigger  holes. 
That's  still  being  worked,  but  we  have  now  demonstrated  what  we 
surmised  on  20ax;  the  logs  are  coming  out  wrong. 

Carothers:  The  first  log  I  see  at  the  CEP  is  the  density  log.  You 
measure  that  with  a  gamma  ray  logging  tool.  What  happened  to  the 
dry-hole  acoustic  log? 

Hearst:  It  is  used,  and  in  fact  you  see  it,  but  you  just  don't  pay 
attention.  It's  the  DHAL,  and  it's  shown  every  time  we  show  logs. 
It's  the  acoustic  velocity.  First  comes  the  caliper  log,  and  then 
comes  the  dry  hole  acoustic.  That's  something  we  invented 
ourselves,  because  there  were  none  in  the  world.  We  needed  it  for 
Plowshare  at  the  time,  because  we  had  no  way  of  measuring  acoustic 
velocity  except  by  seismic  surveys. 

We  went  to  Don  Rawson's  back  yard  one  day,  with  a  couple  of 
acoustic  transducers.  Dick  Carlson  and  I  had  thought  of  attaching 
cones  to  transducers  that  we  had  bought.  We  put  them  on  Rawson's 
fireplace,  and  sure  enough,  we  got  a  signal  through  the  fireplace, 
horizontally.  Then  we  tried  it  on  trees,  as  well.  We  got  acoustic 
signals,  and  we  had  invented  a  dry-hole  acoustic  log.  The  reason 
nobody  in  the  world  uses  it  is  because  it's  not  continuous.  A  logging 
tool  to  be  useful  in  the  industry,  where  drilling  costs  are  immense, 
must  run  continuously  as  you  pull  it  up  the  hole.  There  are  now  a 
couple  of  logs  that  do  that,  but  there  weren't  at  the  time. 

Carothers:  Why  isn't  your  acoustic  log  continuous? 


196  C AG  ING  THE  DRAGON 

Hearst:  Because  it  has  to  dig  into  the  wall  of  the  hole.  You  have 
to  push  it  hard  up  against  the  wall,  and  push  these  points  into  the 
wall.  That's  why  nobody  else  ever  invented  it.  It  wasn't  that  we 
were  these  brilliant  geniuses;  it  was  just  that  nobody  else  could  use 
it  in  their  business. 

Then  we  discovered  a  problem  with  it,  which  is  why  we  call  it 
a  relative  measurement.  In  a  small  hole  it  agrees  quite  well  with 
seismic  measurements  of  velocity.  In  a  big  hole  it  usually  gives  us 
velocities  that  are  too  low.  The  reason  for  this,  apparently,  is  that 
the  material  near  the  wall  of  a  big  hole,  or  any  hole,  is  broken  up 
by  the  drilling  process.  In  the  case  of  a  big  hole  the  depth  to  which 
it  is  broken  up  is  about  the  same  as  the  depth  to  which  the  acoustic 
signal  goes,  so  we're  just  measuring  the  region  which  is  broken  up 
by  the  drilling  process. 

The  least  time  path  is  what  you  measure.  So,  the  higher 
velocity  material  gives  you  less  time,  but  if  you  have  to  go  through 
a  large  amount  of  low  velocity  material  to  get  to  the  high  velocity 
material,  that  doesn't  work.  The  way  we  proved  all  this  was  to  build 
a  tool  with  two  receivers,  which  is  the  standard  way  done  in  the 
industry.  If  we  used  the  measurement  between  the  last  two 
receivers,  it  was  faster  than  between  the  source  and  one  receiver. 
That's  because  the  passage  through  the  broken  up  material  is 
cancelled  out.  Actually,  in  the  industry  now  they  may  use  up  to 
twenty  receivers. 

So,  we  get  the  acoustic  velocity,  and  then  the  density,  which 
we  get  from  the  gamma  log,  and  then  we  show  the  acoustic 
impedance,  which  is  the  product.  And  that's  probably  why  we  still 
show  that  log  -  -  to  show  the  impedance  mismatches. 

For  the  water  content  we  use  the  epithermal  neutron  log,  and 
correct  for  gap  between  the  neutron  sonde  and  the  wall  of  the  hole. 
Los  Alamos  does  not. 

Carothers:  So  you  ought  to  get  different  answers,  in  the  same 

hole. 

Hearst:  Not  only  that,  but  if  you  look  at  the  calibration  curves, 
they're  different. 

And,  we  also  show  the  C02  content,  which  is  still  measured 
from  samples.  And  we  show  the  clay  content,  which  is  done  with 
x-rays,  occasionally. 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


197 


Carothers:  You  also  show  the  resistivity  log.  How  do  you  do 

that? 

Hearst:  Well,  resistivity  is  the  standard  log  in  the  oil  industry. 
That  was  the  first  log  invented,  and  it  was  the  only  thing  available 
for  many  years.  You  put  a  source  of  current  at  the  surface,  and  you 
look  at  the  voltages  generated  by  it,  downhole.  Nowadays  I  think 
some  of  them  have  a  source  of  current  and  voltage  detectors  in  the 
hole.  Some  of  them  use  induction  instead,  because  then  there's  no 
contact  problem. 

Again,  it's  very  difficult  to  do  in  big  holes.  In  the  big,  dry  holes 
none  of  the  standard  methods  work.  We  did  one  time  develop  an 
induction  tool  —  huge  coils  for  a  big  hole  —  but  we  never  made  it 
standard.  What  we  have  for  our  dry  hole  resistivity  log,  which  is  the 
only  thing  we  can  use  in  big,  dry  holes,  is  a  bunch  of  wheels  — 
padded  cloth  wheels  —  saturated  with  copper  sulphate  solution. 
They  roll  up  the  wall  of  the  hole,  and  they're  saturated  with 
conductive  solution.  They  make  contact  with  the  wall  of  the  hole. 
The  basic  problem  is  that  sometimes  they  make  good  contact,  and 
sometimes  they  make  bad  contact  as  they  roll  up  the  hole,  and  so 
you  get  indifferent  results.  That's  our  attempt  at  duplicating  the 
standard  things  that  are  used  in  liquid  filled  holes.  The  current 
source  is  in  one  of  the  wheels,  and  you  measure  the  voltage  between 
the  two  wheels. 

Carothers:  Why  is  it  useful  for  the  CEP? 

Hearst:  Well,  clay  is  conductive  because  it's  has  water  in  it,  and 
it's  got  all  kinds  of  ions  in  it.  So,  clay  is  more  conductive  than 
alluvium  or  tuff.  Supposedly  a  resistivity  log  tells  the  CEP  if  there 
is  clay,  but  there  have  been  a  number  of  studies  done,  and  none  of 
them  link  resistivity  to  clay.  There  have  been  a  number  of  papers 
which  show  there  is  really  no  connection.  Nevertheless,  since  we 
care  very  much  about  clay  because  of  Baneberry,  it  is  traditional  to 
present  a  resistivity  log,  and  to  worry  very  much  if  there  is  a  very 
low  resistivity  somewhere.  Then  you  have  to  go  get  a  sample, 
despite  the  fact  that  Gayle  Palawski  has  written  a  couple  of  papers 
showing  the  lack  of  connection  between  log  resistivity  and  clay 
content. 

The  log  resistivity  is  proportional  to  the  conductivity  of  the 
rock,  which  depends,  among  other  things,  on  the  amount  of  water, 
the  amount  of  clay,  and  the  kind  of  rock.  But  it  depends  even  more, 


198 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


I  believe,  on  the  amount  of  contact  between  these  wheels  and  the 
wall  of  the  hole.  There  are  many  brand  names  of  these  resistivity, 
or  electric,  or  E  logs.  And  there  are  many  configurations  of  the 
electrodes,  depending  on  who  does  it. 

Carothers:  How  about  the  seismic  velocity.  How  is  that 
measured? 

Hearst:  I  got  into  that  when  I  first  got  into  logging.  The  way 
it's  measured  now  is  with  an  air  gun.  There  has  been  a  lot  of  work 
on  that,  and  I  don't  know  too  much  about  how  it's  done  today. 
There  are  problems  with  getting  good  contact  between  the  air  gun 
and  the  rock.  The  air  gun  puts  a  big  pulse  into  the  ground,  at  the 
surface,  and  you  have  detectors  clamped  into  the  hole,  downhole, 
and  they  sense  the  signal.  So,  you're  measuring  the  entire  depth  of 
the  hole,  down  to  the  detector. 

Carothers:  So  if  I  want  to  know  the  velocity  in  a  particular  layer 
I  have  to  subtract  out  ail  the  others  above  it.  It  sounds  as  though 
the  deeper  I  go  the  worse  the  measurement  would  get. 

Hearst:  Weil,  this  is  an  acoustic  signal,  not  going  through 
liquid,  and  you  measure  the  arrival  time  of  this  acoustic  signal.  The 
signal  has  to  be  some  amplitude  that  you  can  see.  Therefore,  the 
arrival  time  really  depends  on  the  contact  between  the  detector  and 
the  wail.  You  look  at  the  analog  trace,  and  you  pick  the  arrival  time. 
If  you  have  less  sensitivity  you  will  see  the  signal  later,  because  the 
signal  is  not  a  step  function;  it  rises  from  zero  to  full  value  in  some 
amount  of  time,  and  when  you  can  see  the  arrival  depends  on  the 
sensitivity  of  the  detector.  It's  a  smoothly  rising  signal,  and  you  pick 
the  time  when  you  can  see  it.  That's  the  trouble  with  automatic 
picking  procedures;  they  depend  on  the  amplitude. 

So,  from  all  this,  the  measured  velocity  depends  on  the  contact 
between  the  detector  and  the  wall.  Again,  this  is  a  problem  with  our 
dry  holes,  which  is  not  much  of  a  problem  in  industry,  where  they 
have  liquids  and  the  contact  doesn't  matter. 

Carothers:  There  are  other  logs,  one  of  which  is  presented  to 
the  CEP  as  the  gravimeter.  Tell  me  about  that. 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


199 


Hearst:  A  gravimeter  is  a  device  that  measures  gravity,  and  it's 
used  routinely  in  the  industry  to  make  subsurface  maps.  I  got 
interested  in  borehole  gravity  when  it  was  first  being  thought  about 
in  the  1 950's.  The  first  paper  was  published  in  1  950,  and  I  was  one 
of  the  first  people  to  use  it  for  anything. 

The  tool  measures  gravity  in  different  places,  and  you  attribute 
variations  to  changes  that  are  underground.  The  idea  of  measuring 
rock  density  with  borehole  gravity  was  very  intriguing  to  me,  and  as 
soon  as  a  borehole  gravity  meter  became  available  I  started  using 
one  to  measure  density  that  way.  You  put  the  tool  downhole,  and 
measure  at  various  stations  at  various  depths,  and  you  can  calculate 
the  density  of  uniform  slabs,  if  you  assume  the  world  is  made  up  of 
uniform  slabs. 

That's  exceedingly  uninteresting,  but  if  you  measure  the 
difference  between  the  gravity  measurements  and  the  density  log, 
and  you  believe  them  both,  you  can  infer  things  about  the  structure 
of  the  earth,  underground.  And  that's  what  it's  used  for.  There's 
now  a  fair  industry;  1  was  at  a  large  meeting  in  Chicago  last  year 
where  people  were  talking  about  improving  the  measurements. 
There  were  maybe  twenty  or  thirty  experts  there. 

Carothers:  The  changes  you  are  looking  for  in  the  gravitational 
field  must  be  very  small,  and  so  the  instrument  must  be  very 
sensitive. 

Hearst:  It  is  a  very  sensitive  instrument.  One  of  the  questions 
raised  at  this  meeting  was,  "Do  we  need  greater  sensitivity?"  The 
conclusion  was  that  the  instrument  is  sensitive  enough  to  do  the  job. 
Basically,  it  has  a  mass  on  an  arm,  and  it  measures  the  angle  of  the 
arm  as  the  field  changes.  That's  the  physics  principle;  the  trick  is 
to  get  it  to  work  in  real  life.  People  have  done  this,  and  there's  one 
company  that  does  it  well.  The  interesting  conclusion  of  that 
meeting  was  that  what  they  wanted  was  to  make  the  measurement 
faster,  and  make  the  equipment  more  rugged  and  more  reliable.  But 
they  didn't  need  more  sensitivity. 

Carothers:  How  do  you  infer  things  about  the  structure? 

Hearst:  You  make  a  calculational  model  of  the  structure, 
calculate  what  the  gravity  would  be  with  that  model,  from  that 
calculate  the  difference  in  gravity  that  you  would  see  at  different 
depths,  and  compare  that  to  what  you  observe.  There  are,  of 


200 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


course,  infinitely  many  structures  that  would  give  you  the  same 
result,  and  all  you  can  do  is  to  use  the  measurements  to  choose 
between  proposed  models. 

It  has  apparently  worked  very  well  in  the  oil  industry  to  find  oil 
some  distance  from  a  hole.  Again,  their  density  logs  are  much  more 
accurate  than  ours,  because  they  satisfy  all  the  assumptions  —  good 
contact  with  the  hole,  no  gap,  and  it's  a  small  hole.  They  can  use 
very  small  density  differences  to  infer  useful  things.  We  can't, 
because  our  measurements  aren't  that  good  because  of  our  big, 
rough  holes.  But  that's  what  we  use  it  for. 

There  is  also  a  thing  called  a  gravity  gradient  measurement, 
where  you're  measuring  the  change  in  gravity  with  depth.  You  can 
build  instruments  which  measure  the  gradient,  but  it  turns  out  that 
gravity  measurements  are  sensitive  to  one  over  R  squared  of  the 
mass.  The  gradient  measurement  is  sensitive  to  one  over  R  cubed, 
and  the  gradiometer  is  so  sensitive  to  changes  in  the  hole  configu¬ 
ration  and  things  like  that,  that  you  don't  buy  anything  by  building 
a  gradiometer. 

Carothers:  What's  the  free  air  gradient  that  is  always  measured 
when  you're  doing  gravity  measurements? 

Hearst:  If  you  calculate  the  density,  using  a  gravity  meter, 
there  is  a  constant  term,  an  additive  constant,  that  is  in  the  formula 
for  the  gravimetric  density.  It  is  the  change  in  gravity  with  depth 
which  is  caused  by  the  fact  that  you're  getting  closer  to  the  center 
of  the  earth.  It's  called  the  free  air  gradient  because  originally  it  was 
the  change  in  gravity  measured  as  you  got  closer  to  the  surface  of 
the  earth,  in  the  air.  When  we  started  working  with  this,  we  decided 
we  ought  to  measure  this  free  air  gradient  by  making  gravity 
measurements  on  a  tower.  Well,  a  lot  of  people  in  the  field  said  that 
was  a  bad  way  of  doing  it,  because  that  measurement  is  very 
sensitive  to  things  that  are  close  to  the  surface.  In  fact,  that 
measurement  is  now  used  to  look  for  tunnels  and  things  like  that 
which  are  near  the  surface. 

You  get  a  much  better  measurement  of  the  free  air  gradient  by 
measuring  the  gravity  at  the  surface  over  a  wide  area,  and  doing  a 
transformation  to  calculate  the  free  air  gradient.  Norm  and  I  finally 
got  persuaded  by  a  number  of  publications  by  other  people  that  is 
indeed  the  correct  way  to  do  it.  We  were  not  doing  it  right,  and  so 
we  now  do  it  that  way.  We  no  longer  measure  it  directly.  If  you're 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


201 


making  measurements  near  the  surface,  yes,  you  should  measure  it 
above  the  surface.  But  when  you're  measuring  at  depth,  as  we  are, 
in  general  you're  better  off  by  calculating  it  from  a  number  of 
surface  measurements. 

incidentiy,  one  of  the  things  you  have  to  correct  for  is  tide,  and 
the  first  time  I  asked  for  tide  tables  for  the  Nevada  Test  Site  people 
thought  I  was  crazy.  If  you  set  a  gravity  meter  out  on  the  ground, 
it  changes  with  time,  because  the  sun  and  the  moon  affect  it.  There 
are  earth  tides,  and  that's  what  you  have  to  correct  for.  That's 
automatic  now. 

The  seismic  survey  business  is  another  huge  industry,  and  it's 
been  a  very  successful  one.  The  surveys  show  you  where  reflecting 
layers  are,  below  the  surface.  I  have  never  been  able  to  interpret 
the  measurements  with  any  comfort.  I  think  it  requires  a  great  deal 
of  imagination  to  interpret  those  surveys,  but  people  do  it  success¬ 
fully,  and  get  paid  very  well  for  it.  It  is  a  universally  used  procedure, 
and  that's  how  all  this  information  we  get  about  the  structure  of  the 
earth  comes  to  us. 

It  is  another  technique  which  is  standard  in  the  oil  industry,  but 
which  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  use  at  the  Test  Site.  The  highly 
porous  rocks  near  the  surface  are  highly  absorbing  for  the  acoustic 
signals.  We  used  to  hear  stories  of  how  some  world  expert  in  seismic 
measurements  would  come  to  the  Test  Site  and  go  out  with  our 
technician.  The  expert  would  start  setting  off  small  explosions  and 
get  no  signal.  Finally  our  technician  would  say,  "You  have  to  use 
two  sticks  of  dynamite  instead  of  one  detonator  to  get  a  signal  here." 
For  many  years  companies  would  come  out  and  produce  thick 
reports  about  why  they  failed.. 

Norm  Burkhard  got  his  Morrison  Award  because  he  was  the 
first  person  to  do  a  successful  seismic  survey  at  the  Test  Site.  He 
used  a  procedure  which  I  don't  quite  understand,  where  he  used  a 
fairly  small  charge.  He  got  it  to  work;  it  had  to  do  with  using  the 
right  source-detector  spacing,  and  the  right  type  of  charge,  and  all 
sorts  of  things  like  that,  which  he  said  he  learned  in  school. 

It  is  difficult  technique  to  use  at  the  Test  Site,  but  we  do  have 
seismic  surveys  now,  and  they  are  used  usually  to  look  at  cross 
sections,  to  interpret  them.  A  number  of  them  have  been  done,  but 
nothing  like  the  number  that  have  been  done  in  the  oil  patch. 
They're  quite  expensive,  but  you  can  call  in  a  crew,  and  they'll  do 


202 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


it.  My  problem  is  in  interpreting  them,  but  people  do  it.  You  can 
see  things,  but  figuring  out  what  they  mean  is  another  story.  Now 
again,  there's  a  huge  amount  of  software  that's  been  developed  to 
improve  these  things,  and  there's  all  kinds  of  difficulties  converting 
time,  which  is  what  you  measure,  to  distance,  which  is  what  you 
want. 

By  the  way,  another  way  people  in  the  industry  measure 
porosity  is  velocity.  These  velocity  logs  in  industry,  in  the  right 
circumstances,  get  porosity  from  velocity,  if  you  make  the  right 
assumptions.  In  a  clean,  water  filled  sandstone,  all  you  need  is  the 
velocity.  As  far  as  I  know,  every  formula  that's  used  assumes  clean, 
water  filled  sandstone.  So,  a  velocity  log  is  called  a  porosity  tool, 
and  that's  what  it  was  developed  for.  There  was  recently  an  issue 
of  one  of  the  journals  published  on  the  use  of  velocity  logs  to  infer 
porosity  and  permeability  and  things  like  that  in  rocks  like  granite. 
Now  people  are  starting  to  measure  fractures  with  velocity.  You  can 
do  all  kinds  of  neat  things  with  acoustic  signals,  in  a  water  filled  hole. 
You  can  actually  make  a  picture  of  the  wall  of  the  hole  and  look  at 
the  fractures,  and  things  like  that.  You  can  even  see  some  depth  into 
the  wall,  and  see  fractures. 

Carothers:  One  of  the  things  people  on  the  Panel,  from  time 
to  time,  ask  about  is  the  stress  state  of  the  rock,  and  about  the  shear 
strength.  What  can  be  done  there? 

Hearst:  We  are,  in  fact,  developing  a  method  of  measuring 
strength,  compressional  strength.  I  have  spent  a  fair  amount  of 
time,  from  time  to  time,  trying  to  figure  out  how  to  do  that 
downhole.  I  have  not  yet  found  a  method  we  could  field.  There  are 
methods  that  I  have  looked  at  that  are  used,  even  some  that  are  done 
in  the  tunnels,  that  are  very  difficult  to  do  remotely.  For  example, 
putting  two  pins  in  the  wall  of  the  hole,  measuring  the  distance 
between  them  very  accurately  somehow,  then  taking  a  saw  and 
making  a  slot  in  the  wall  between  those  two  pins,  and  then  measuring 
the  distance  between  them  again.  We've  spent  some  money  looking 
at  things  like  that.  One  of  the  major  problems  is  that  the  borehole 
causes  a  major  change  to  the  in-situ  stress,  and  so  whatever  you 
measure  in  the  wall  of  the  borehole  may  not  have  a  great  deal  to  do 
with  what's  out  in  the  rock.  But  we've  looked  at  a  number  of 
methods  for  that. 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools  203 

Carothers:  I  think  of  it  because  one  of  the  things  people  are 
touting  these  days,  maybe  correctly,  maybe  not,  is  the  following 
argument.  There  isn't,  necessarily,  any  residual  stress  field  around 
the  cavity.  There  would  be  in  a  uniform  medium,  or  world,  but  we 
don't  shoot  shots  in  such  a  world.  Blocks  move,  here  and  there,  and 
what  really  contains  shots  is  hydrofractures,  which  drive  out  into  the 
rock  a  short  distance,  dump  a  lot  of  steam,  cool  the  cavity  down, 
and  that's  it. 

Hearst:  That's  quite  possible.  Now,  we  have  worked  on 
measuring  shock  induced  stress.  In  fact,  we  just  had  a  failure  on  the 
Bristol  event,  where  we  got  numbers  that  were  mostly  strain.  It  is 
exceedingly  difficult  to  measure  shock  induced  stress.  Part  of  the 
problem  is  that  the  shock  damages  the  gauges.  The  biggest  problem 
is  that  it's  very  easy  to  measure  a  stress  in  the  stress  transducer,  but 
relating  that  to  the  stress  in  the  rock  is  very  difficult  indeed.  If  you 
could,  in  fact,  put  the  transducer  in  direct,  intimate  contact  with  the 
rock,  you  could  do  it.  But  you  can't.  You  have  to  drill  a  hole,  you 
have  to  put  the  transducer  in  a  package,  you  have  to  put  the  package 
is  some  kind  of  stemming  material,  and  all  of  that  makes  a  big 
difference  in  the  measurement.  We've  worked  quite  hard  on  that. 
We've  developed  procedures  for  reducing  the  data,  and  they 
haven't  worked  very  well  either. 

Carothers:  How  about  measurements  where  you  could  say, 
"Yes,  there  is  a  residual  stress  field,  because  before  the  shot  I 
measured  the  stress  in  this  region,  and  thirty  seconds  after  the  shot, 
here's  what  that  stress  field  was,  and  it  was  different." 

Hearst:  We've  had  some  little  hints  of  that  in  these  measure¬ 
ments,  but  one  of  the  major  problems  is  that  every  stress  transducer 
you  can  build  is  also  affected  by  strain.  You  can't  distinguish 
between  stress  and  strain  easily,  and  so  we  have  not  been  able  to 
prove  that  what  we  have  seen  is  actually  residual  stress.  We  have 
seen  signals  that  have  stayed  up  for  long  periods  of  time,  but  we 
can't  prove  what  they  are. 

Carothers:  As  contrasted  to  post-shot  stress,  there  is  a  lot  of 
interest,  by  people  who  are  interested  in  the  hydrofracing  model,  in 
in-situ  stress. 


204 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Hearst:  Attempts  have  been  made,  and  papers  have  been 
published,  even  about  work  at  the  Test  Site.  Again,  it's  something 
that's  done  routinely  in  small  holes  in  mines,  where  you  can  get  at 
the  rock,  where  you  can  drill  a  small  hole  and  put  an  instrument  in 
it.  Even  then  there  are  difficulties. 

While  we  have  not  developed  a  method  for  measuring  in-situ 
stress  remotely,  we  are  developing  a  method  to  measure  strength. 
It's  very  difficult,  again,  to  calibrate.  It  is  known  that  the  penetra¬ 
tion  of  a  projectile  into  a  material,  such  as  a  rock,  depends  on  the 
strength  of  the  rock,  among  other  things.  We  did  a  series  of 
experiments  in  concretes,  and  things  like  that,  where  we  demon¬ 
strated  this.  And,  there's  been  a  great  deal  of  work  done  on  it 
because  of  penetrating  weapons,  by  Sandia  and  Waterways  Experi¬ 
ment  Station.  They  have  developed  a  whole  bunch  of  complicated 
formulas  for  calculating  the  penetration. 

I  discovered  that  a  formula  developed  in  1  765,  or  something 
like  that,  by  Euler,  was  much  better  than  any  of  the  formulas 
developed  in  modern  times,  and  he  used  very  simple  math.  At  any 
rate,  we  now  have  a  device,  built,  which  is  capable  of  being  put  down 
hole.  It  fires  a  projectile  into  the  wall  of  the  hole,  by  remote 
control,  measures  the  decceleration,  and  then  retracts.  It  can  then 
be  used  to  repeat.  This  device  exists,  but  the  equipment  to  lower 
it  down  the  hole  doesn't  exist.  There  are  a  lot  of  difficulties  with 
it. 

One  of  the  major  problems,  of  course,  is  in  calibration.  You 
can  calibrate  it  in  concrete  fine,  and  that's  what  we're  working  on. 
Calibrating  it  in  rock  is  extremely  difficult.  We're  going  to  take  it 
down  to  the  tunnels,  and  we've  done  this  once  before  with  a  kluge. 
Now  we're  doing  it  with  the  real  apparatus.  The  problem,  of  course, 
is  knowing  the  right  answer.  When  you  fire  it  into  a  rock,  and 
measure  the  decceleration,  what  is  the  strength  of  that  rock?  You 
get  a  core  sample,  and  you  measure  the  strength  of  that  core  sample. 
You  hope  that  if  you  measure  it  six  inches  from  the  place  you're 
measuring  with  the  tool  that  it  is  at  least  similar.  But  if  you  take  two 
or  three  core  samples,  and  you  measure  the  strength  of  them, 
they're  wildly  different.  And  if  you  shoot  in  two  or  three  places  in 
this  piece  of  rock,  you  get  different  penetrations.  I  think  we'll  be 
lucky  if  we  get  a  factor  of  two  accuracy;  we'll  be  happy  if  we  get  a 


Logging  and  Logging  Tools 


205 


factor  of  two  accuracy.  But  this  tool  I  am  very  pleased  with.  It's 
calibrating  pretty  well  in  grouts,  and  I'm  looking  forward  to  doing 
it  this  summer  in  the  tunnels.  It's  a  lovely  piece  of  apparatus. 

Carothers:  Maybe  the  strength  varies  by  a  factor  of  two  over 
short  distances. 

Hearst:  Quite  possibly.  At  any  rate,  we  have  actually  built  this 
apparatus,  which  is  on  wheels  at  the  moment.  We  have  designed  a 
device  to  lower  it.  It's  designed  to  work  in  a  big  hole,  to  clamp  up 
against  the  wall  of  a  big  hole  and  fire  the  projectile  into  the  wall. 

John  Rambo  uses  the  drilling  rate  as  a  measure,  of  some  kind, 
of  the  strength,  but  it  also  measures  other  properties.  Among  other 
things  it  depends  on  how  the  drillers  are  working,  and  how  much 
weight  is  on  the  bit,  and  how  sharp  the  bit  is.  But  it  is  another 
measure. 

John  also  believes  that  the  velocity  is  another  measure  of  the 
strength.  Remember  that  I  told  you  that  the  velocity  depends  on 
how  much  the  rock  is  broken  up  by  the  drilling?  Well,  if  it's  broken 
up  less,  it's  stronger,  and  so  the  velocity  is  higher.  A  lot  of  other 
things  will  make  the  velocity  higher  also.  We  may  have  to  use  all  of 
these  methods  together  to  infer  a  strength.  But  since  strength  makes 
a  great  deal  of  difference  in  a  calculation,  it's  important  to  get  it. 


206 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


207 


8 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


A  nuclear  detonation  produces  ten  to  the  twelth  calories  per 
kiloton,  by  definition.  All  of  that  energy  is  deposited  in  the  earth, 
and  ultimately,  over  a  long  period  of  time,  results  in  making  the 
earth  as  a  whole  somewhat  warmer.  Over  the  short  term,  the  energy 
deposition  can  cause  many  different  things  to  take  place.  The 
question  of  what  that  energy  deposition  does,  and  what  fraction  goes 
into  each  phenomenon  is  an  open  one,  subject  to  many  variables. 
Some  amount  causes  surrounding  rock  to  vaporize  and  to  melt. 
Another  amount  causes  the  surrounding  material  to  move,  giving 
rise  to  motions  in  the  ground.  Some  causes  open  pores  to  collapse, 
some  gives  rise  to  stresses  in  the  rock,  some  is  carried  away  by 
elastic  waves  that  propagate  to  large  distances.  The  amount  of  the 
energy  that  goes  into  each  of  the  various  channels  determines  the 
phenomena  that  are  produced  by  the  detonation.  Some  are  easily 
seen;  that  which  goes  into  the  seismic  wave  can  be  detected  world¬ 
wide.  The  amount  that  melts  rock  stays  close  to  the  origin;  the  rock 
cools,  solidifies,  and  can  only  be  seen  if  a  costly  reentry  is  made  to 
the  vicinity  of  the  detonation  point. 

App:  When  you  are  looking  at  the  coupling  of  the  energy,  and 
ground  motions,  there  is  the  issue  of  how  much  energy  actually  gets 
coupled  into  the  rock,  as  opposed  to  what  remains  behind  in  the 
cavity.  This  deals  with  the  shock  Hugoniot  and  the  release  proper¬ 
ties  of  the  vaporized  rock.  Butkovitch,  in  1974,  determined  that 
there  are  large  differences  in  the  kind  of  energy  coupling  between 
low  and  high  density  rock.  He  looked  at  the  refractories  in  the  melt 
puddle  and  assumed  perfect  mixing,  and  from  that  inferred  how 
much  melt  had  been  generated.  That  gave  a  value  for  how  much 
energy  had  stayed  behind  in  the  cavity.  What  he  showed  was  that 
for  a  dense  rock  you  get  twice  as  much,  or  maybe  more  than  twice 
as  much,  of  the  energy  into  the  shock  wave  as  you  do  for  a  shot  in 
low  density,  like  1 .6  grams  per  cc,  rock.  And  so,  starting  off  one 
looks  like  a  bigger  bomb  than  the  other,  but  it  doesn't  really  change 
the  waveform  characteristics,  just  the  amplitude  of  the  signal.  It 
looks  like  a  bigger  bomb. 


208  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Now,  the  porosity,  and  a  number  of  other  things  change  how 
large  the  bomb  appears  to  be;  how  much  energy  goes  into  the  solid 
rock.  One  can  make  the  argument  that  there  could  be  a  factor  of 
two  in  how  much  energy  goes  into  the  stress  wave,  just  from  the 
Butkovitch  work.  We  should  be  able  to  go  back  and  systematically 
look  at  cortex  data  to  determine  the  hydrodynamic  coupling  for 
different  materials.  That's  essentially  what  cortex  is  sampling  -  -  the 
energy  that  goes  into  the  shock  wave.  If  we  could  combine  that  with 
additional  rad  chem  analyses  of  melt  puddles,  we  might  be  able  to 
come  up  with  some  relationship  between  such  coupling  and  the 
working  point  material. 

The  other  part  is,  as  we  move  farther  out,  there's  this  other 
phase  of  coupling,  where  the  strength  of  the  materials  comes  into 
effect  and  changes  both  the  wave  shape  and  the  amplitude.  That's 
the  regime  where  the  properties  of  the  rock  can  modify  the  wave 
form  to  make  it  look  like  maybe  something  else,  another  type  of 
source. 

Carothers:  Does  that  matter  to  containment? 

App:  I  think  it  matters.  Anything  we  can  learn  about  how 
much  energy  gets  coupled  into  the  ground,  and  how  it  gets  coupled 
in,  I  think  is  relevant  to  containment.  If  a  bomb  is  going  to  put  twice 
as  much  energy  into  ground  shock  because  it's  in  this  material  rather 
than  in  that  one,  that's  relevant.  It's  relevant  to  containment 
because  we  worry  about  the  yield  of  the  bomb,  and  that's  the  yield 
of  the  bomb,  as  far  as  the  ground  shock  is  concerned. 

Higgins:  There  was  a  recent  tunnel  experiment  that  was 
identical  in  almost  every  respect  to  a  test  that  had  been  fired  six 
months  before.  The  results  show  that  the  same  explosive  yield,  in 
the  same  configuration,  created  a  seismic  signal  that  was  one-half  as 
large,  or  even  a  little  bit  less  than  half  as  large,  in  one  case  as  in  the 
other.  That  doesn't  disturb  anyone,  because  everyone  knows  that 
the  seismic  wave  is  kind  of  a  vague  and  various  thing.  But  when 
people  began  to  examine  the  close-in  strong  motion  measurements, 
they  too  were  half  as  large,  or  less.  And,  as  were  the  accelerations, 
as  was  the  tunnel  damage.  If  you  went  to  a  distance  like  a  hundred 
meters  from  each  of  these  two  explosions,  in  one  case  there  was 
nearly  total  destruction  of  everything.  The  tunnel  was  collapsed, 
and  so  forth.  In  the  other  case  there  was  almost  no  observable 
effect;  there  were  displacements,  but  they  were  modest. 


Energy’  Coupling  and  Partition  209 

As  the  data  are  examined,  one  of  the  suggestions,  and  it  looks 
now  to  me  to  be  the  most  likely  suggestion,  is  that  the  mechanisms 
for  coupling  energy,  in  that  region  where  melting  and  vaporization 
was  going  on,  was  very  different  in  the  two  cases.  If  you  think  of 
the  total  explosion,  very  close  to  the  explosion  rock  is  melted  and 
heated  to  extremely  high  temperatures.  So,  there  is  a  part  of  the 
total  explosion  energy  that  goes  into  heating  the  immediate  sur¬ 
roundings,  and  that  part  goes  into  forming  the  cavity.  There's 
another  fraction  of  the  total  energy  that  goes  into  deformation  of 
the  rock  in  an  elastic-plastic  sense.  And  finally,  way  out  at  longer 
distances,  there's  an  elastic  wave  which  creates  a  seismic  wave. 

We've  long  said  that  about  fifty  percent  or  so  of  the  total  bomb 
energy  goes  into  the  thermal  cavity  region,  that  another  large 
fraction,  also  about  fifty  percent,  goes  into  the  plastic  deformation 
region,  and  a  very  tiny  part  -  -  one  percent  or  less  -  -  goes  into  the 
seismic  signal.  What  these  two  shots,  and  the  measurements  since 
then,  suggest  is  that  this  roughly  equal  partition  between  the  molten 
and  the  plastic  deformation  is  variable,  and  a  lot  more  variable  than 
we  thought.  And  that,  in  turn,  affects  the  one  percent  or  so  that's 
left  over  for  the  seismic  wave  by  a  rather  large  factor. 

For  example,  look  at  the  amount  of  energy  that  is  stored  in 
what  we  call  the  containment  cage.  Take  from  one  cavity  radius  to 
three  cavity  radii  and  say  that  is  the  containment  cage  region. 
That's  a  very  crude  set  of  definitions,  but  if  you  put  two  bars  of 
stress  in  that  spherical  shell,  that  amounts  to  thirty  percent  of  the 
initial  device  energy,  using  the  compression  curves  that  we  are 
measuring.  That  amount  of  energy  in  the  containment  cage  is  a 
significantly  large  fraction  of  the  device  energy,  and  things  that  go 
on  to  perturb  it  are  big  things,  not  little  things. 

Carothers:  What  would  lead  to  variability  between  the  ratio  of 
device  energy  that  goes  into  cavity  formation  and  the  elastic-plastic 
type  of  deformation? 

Higgins:  There  are  quite  a  lot  of  things,  it  turns  out.  We  have 
started  to  look  at  that,  but  I  don't  think  the  subject  has  been 
adequately  studied,  certainly  not  exhaustively.  The  most  obvious 
thing  that  changes  the  ratio  is  irreversible  pore  collapse.  Suppose 
you  built  the  test  medium  out  of  fiberglass  foam,  or  frothy  pumice¬ 
like  blocks,  with  fifty  percent  air-filled  void.  The  crushing  of  those 
voids  would  consume  huge  amounts  of  energy.  Of  course,  the 


2 1 0  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

material  gets  very  hot  when  it's  compressed,  but  we  don't  measure 
temperature  from  a  distance,  so  we  don't  know  how  hot  it  gets.  All 
we  know  is  how  much  of  the  compressive  wave  got  transmitted,  and 
if  you're  crushing  the  material,  you're  not  transmitting  any  wave. 

So,  air-filled  voids  are  one  thing  that  can  change  the  ratio. 
There  are  other  kinds  of  things,  such  as  phase  transitions.  Every¬ 
body  is  familiar  with  the  ice  cube  in  the  drink,  and  the  fact  that  you 
have  a  phase  transition  going  on.  It  keeps  the  drink  cold  even 
though  there  is  almost  no  volume  change.  The  same  thing  happens 
in  an  even  more  pronounced  way  in  some  solids,  like  rocks.  There 
are  phase  transitions  that  go  on  where  minerals  hydrate,  or  dehy¬ 
drate,  or  melt,  or  vaporize,  or  change  from  loose  open  structures  to 
dense  compact  structures.  A  common  one  is  the  transition  of 
carbon  to  diamond,  where  there  is  a  big  density  change.  Silica  does 
the  same  thing.  It  goes  from  an  orthorhombic  eightfold  symmetry 
to  cubic  symmetry  at  very  high  pressures,  and  the  volume  change 
that  accompanies  that  is  like  a  factor  of  two.  So  the  amount  of 
energy  that  can  be  stored,  just  by  going  from  an  open  loose  structure 
to  a  high  density  structure  is  huge. 

Carothers:  You  mean  that  just  to  generically  call  the  Rainier 
Mesa  rocks  'tuff'  doesn't  tell  you  what  you  need  to  know? 

Higgins:  Right,  and  it  doesn't  even  tell  you  what  you  need  to 
know  if  you  identify  it  as  being  Tunnel  Bed  Four,  because  it  turns 
out  that  the  degree  of  zeolitization,  the  minerals  of  Tunnel  Bed 
Four,  are  quite  different  in  different  places. 

Carothers:  So,  to  say  that  you  have  Tunnel  Bed  Four  here,  and 
in  a  different  location  you  also  have  Tunnel  Bed  Four,  as  the 
geologists  do,  is  not  adequate  to  determine  what's  going  to  happen 
when  the  device  goes  off,  at  least  close-in. 

Higgins:  That's  a  conclusion  that  appears  to  be  true.  I've  got 
an  analogy,  which  isn't  exact.  The  business  of  containment,  the 
interaction  of  a  nuclear  explosion  with  the  earth,  is  somewhat  like 
atomic  physics  was  at  the  turn  of  the  century.  People  were 
beginning  to  discover  the  difference  between  the  orbital  electrons 
in  the  various  atoms.  Then  they  discovered  there  was  a  nucleus,  and 
there  was  the  atomic  structure.  Then  there  is  the  nuclear  structure, 
and  they  discovered  that  makes  a  difference;  all  nuclei  aren't  just 
the  same  nuclei.  There  are  levels  in  those  nuclei  and  there  are 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


211 


particles  in  there.  And  then,  there  are  particles  in  the  particles.  I 
think  that  going  from  the  picture  of  the  earth  as  homogeneous  is  just 
like  the  transition  when  they  said,  "You  know,  the  atom  isn't  a 
pudding.  It's  more  complicated  than  that." 

We're  at  the  point  of  knowing  things  are  more  complicated, 
but  not  exactly  what  ail  of  the  complications  are.  That  is  still  an 
open  question.  It's  not  open  to  the  degree  that  we  don't  have  some 
pretty  good  containment  rules,  but  it  is  open  to  the  degree  that  we 
can't  say  we  can  test  in  every  conceivable  situation  with  complete 
certainty.  There  are  questions  that  have  to  be  answered  in  every 
case.  I  think  we  can  answer  them.  I  don't  see  any  insurmountable 
technological  problems,  but  it's  more  complicated  than  we  first 
thought,  by  quite  a  bit. 

The  amount  of  melt  is  one  of  the  interesting  numbers  to  look 
at.  I  really  do  believe,  and  I  think  most  of  us  in  the  business  believe, 
that  energy  is  conserved.  Ten  to  the  twelfth  calories  in  a  glacier,  or 
in  the  Greenland  ice  cap,  will  melt  a  fixed  amount  of  ice,  and  it 
doesn't  make  a  lot  of  difference  if  it  does  it  by  crushing  or  whatever. 
One  of  the  rules  of  thermodynamics  is  that  the  paths  are  not 
important;  the  end  states  will  be  the  same  no  matter  what  path  you 
take.  There  is  a  certain  amount  of  ice  transformed  into  a  certain 
amount  of  water.  If  you  know  the  total  energy,  you  know  the  total 
amount  of  water  regardless  of  the  path. 

When  you  consider  those  kinds  of  things,  and  then  you  observe 
such  different  results  in  the  seismic  signal  from  two  different  events, 
you  have  to  say,  "It's  clear  that  there  have  been  differences  in  the 
thermodynamic  path,  and  that  must  be  related  to  the  materials 
involved,  and  in  the  structure."  We  know  that  the  total  has  to  be 
the  same. 

Take  the  differences  between  P  tunnel,  and  N  and  T  tunnel.  N 
and  T  turn  out  to  be  almost  twins,  but  P  is  different.  When  we  ask 
the  question,  "Well,  what  is  different?"  what  turns  out  to  be 
different  is  the  degree  of  zeolitization,  although  the  stratigraphic 
units  are  the  same.  That's  a  fancy  way  of  saying  to  what  degree  the 
original  volcanic  glass  has  been  transformed  into  some  kind  of  a  clay 
mineral.  There  are  units  in  both  tunnels  that  have  the  same  amount 
of  clay  formation,  but  the  clay  occurs  at  different  levels  in  the 
stratigraphic  section.  In  other  words,  the  geologists  have  layered 
the  cake  differently  than  the  physics  does. 


212  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Carothers:  There  was  a  man,  Rick  Warren,  who  gave  a 
presentation  at  one  of  the  CEP  meetings  about  identifying  the  rock 
structures  by  mineral  analysis.  He  felt  that  was  the  way  you  should 
identify  the  layers.  His  didn't  correspond  to  the  conventional  units, 
but  his  point  was  that  he  could  tell  you  that  the  rock  at  this  depth 
in  this  hole  is  like  that  rock  at  a  different  depth  in  that  hole. 

Higgins:  Right.  DNA  had  him  to  do  a  special  set  of  examina¬ 
tions,  and  it  was  through  his  work  that  this  analysis  of  the  P  tunnel 
versus  N  tunnel  came  out.  There  are  like  fivefold  differences  in  the 
amounts  of  some  of  the  minerals. 

Carothers:  Might  one  say,  "Over  and  over  again  we  learn  that 
the  earth  is  an  inhomogeneous  body  of  materials.  There's  no  reason 
to  be  surprised  by  differences  in  the  response  of  the  rocks  to  shots 
in  different  locations,  because  if  you  don't  think  of  the  rocks  just  as 
Tunnel  Beds  Four,  and  instead  look  at  their  mineralographic  makeup, 
you're  in  a  different  medium  in  those  locations?" 

Higgins:  That's  right.  That's  what  you  would  conclude.  And 
that  has  to  do  with  the  history  of  the  two  areas  we've  been  trying 
to  understand,  and  their  history  with  water.  One  is  closer  to  the 
edge  of  the  old  original  pile  of  ash. 

In  the  first  years  of  underground  testing  the  radiochemists  had 
a  difficlt  time  determining  the  fraction  of  the  yield  that  resulted 
from  the  fusion  reactions.  The  samples  obtained  from  the  post-shot 
drill-backs  sufficed  for  measuring  the  number  of  fission  reactions, 
but  the  number  of  fusion  reactions  was  difficult  problem.  In  this 
circumstance  other  methods  of  measuring  the  yield,  or  energy 
release,  of  the  device  were  sought. 

The  yield  could,  in  principle,  be  determined  by  measuring  the 
velocity  of  the  outgoing  shock  wave  in  the  earth  materials  surround¬ 
ing  the  device.  Small  diameter  holes  drilled  near  the  emplacement 
hole  were  used  to  place  various  instruments  in,  hopefully,  known 
locations  with  respect  to  the  device  so  the  shock  velocity  could  be 
measured.  Information  about  the  behavior  of  the  medium  itself 
could  also  be  determined  by  instruments  placed  in  the  same  satellite 
holes  to  measure  the  pressures  and  accelerations  produced  by  the 
shock  as  it  passed 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


213 


Two  of  the  important  tools  for  obtaining  information  about 
shock  velocities  are  what  are  called  the  “slifer,”  and  the  "corrtex." 
In  the  slifer,  a  long  length  of  coaxial  cable  acts  as  the  inductance  in 
an  oscillator  circuit.  When  the  cable  is  placed  in  an  environment 
where  the  cable  is  progressively  crushed,  and  thereby  electrically 
shorted  by  some  external  pressure,  the  frequency  of  the  circuit 
changes.  Measurement  of  the  frequency  of  the  oscillator  as  a 
function  of  time  will  then  give  the  rate  at  which  the  cable  is  being 
electrically  shortened.  In  the  corrtex  there  is  also  a  long  length  of 
cable,  whose  length  is  determined  by  sending  short  electrical  pulses 
down  it  and  measuring  the  time  it  takes  for  them  to  reflect  from  the 
shorted  end. 

SLIFER  -  Shorted  Location  Indicator  by  Frequency  of  Electri¬ 
cal  Resonance. 

CORRTEX  -  Continuous  Reflectometry  for  Radius  versus 
Time  Experiment. 

Bass:  I  first  got  involved  with  underground  measurements 
when  I  was  asked  to  head  an  instrumentation  section  to  make  the 
close-in  earth  motion  measurements  on  Scooter.  We  had  stations 
at  25  feet,  50  feet,  1 00  feet,  200  feet,  in  vertical  drill  holes  at  shot 
depth.  Then  we  had  some  instruments  above  them,  making  some 
vertical  measurements,  and  then  we  had  a  few  surface  measure¬ 
ments.  Scooter  provided  absolutely  fantastic  data  that  probably  is 
not  equaled  today. 

Carothers:  Were  these  the  first  attempts  at  such  measure¬ 
ments? 

Bass:  No.  There  were  very  good  measurements  on  Rainier. 
Bill  Perret  did  those.  Rainier  was  an  outstanding  experiment  and  it 
was  very  well  measured.  Actually,  some  of  the  measurements  were 
fantastic.  Go  back  and  look  at  the  work  that  Fran  Porzell  did.  He 
had  left  Los  Alamos,  and  was  at  Armour  Research  at  that  time. He 
was  attempting  to  measure  hydrodynamic  yield,  and  he  had  mea¬ 
surements  that  are  now  on  what  I  am  going  to  say  is  the  cutting  edge 
of  what  Los  Alamos  is  now  trying  to  do  .  There  was  a  Doppler 
system  radar  on  Rainier  to  measure  the  shock  wave  arrival  which 
actually  was  as  good,  or  just  as  far  advanced,  as  Los  Alamos  is  doing 
on  the  hydrodynamic  yield  programs  today. 


214 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Also,  on  Scooter  we  tried  to  make  pressure  measurements,  and 
we  got  next  to  nothing.  We  put  in  a  few  hydrophones,  which  are 
underwater  pressure  gauges,  which  we  tried  to  adapt  to  under¬ 
ground,  in  soil,  measurements.  These  hydrophones,  which  were 
made  by  Atlantic  Research  Corporation,  were  ail  Navy  type  equip¬ 
ment.  They  were  a  little  batch  of  barium  titanate  crystals,  I  think, 
in  a  sack,  and  they  drove  a  cathode  follower,  which  was  an  emitter 
follower  which  drove  a  line  driver.  We  tried  to  put  those  in  a 
pressure  chamber,  and  tried  to  calibrate  them.  We  then  put  the 
gauge,  which  looked  like  your  finger  with  a  little  bulb  at  the  bottom, 
in  a  plastic  sack  of  sand.  We  then  put  this  in  a  metal  frame,  lowered 
it  down  the  hole,  and  poured  matching  grout  around  it.  The  idea 
was  that  we  would  activate  the  crystals  in  the  chamber.  The  return 
was  zero. 

The  reason  the  return  was  zero  was  that  during  the  long  period 
of  time  when  Scooter  misfired,  and  then  finally  went,  we  had  snows 
and  rains  and  everything  else  on  the  Test  Site.  The  emitter-follower 
boxes  were  right  at  the  surface,  and  they  all  got  wet,  and  shorted 
out.  As  project  officer  I  was  at  fault  for  not  having  them  moved. 
That  shot  went  about  the  first  week  of  October,  I  believe,  instead 
of  July,  for  reasons  we  have  talked  about. 

Brownlee:  Right  after  the  moratorium  I  was  doing  hydrody¬ 
namic  yield  measurements  in  satellite  holes.  Ray  Blossom  picked  the 
site  for  the  shot,  and  Bob  Newman  told  them  how  deep  to  drill  the 
hole,  using  his  little  scaling  law.  Then  I  came  along  and  said,  "Okay, 
let's  drill  a  hole  here,  and  a  hole  there,  and  a  hole  over  there,  so  for 
that  yield  range  I  can  measure  the  hydrodynamic  yield." 

In  order  to  do  that  I  would  go  talk  to  the  designers,  and  spend 
time  with  them.  I  would  say,  "You've  got  this  down  as  10  kt. 
What's  the  chances  it  will  go  1  5  kt?  What's  the  chances  it  will  go 
five?  What's  the  chance  it  will  only  give  us  a  hundred  tons?"  I  would 
listen  to  everything  I  was  told,  and  I  would  say  to  myself,  "Well,  they 
say  it's  going  to  go  ten,  but  it's  clearly  not  going  to  do  that."  So, 
I  would  locate  the  satellite  holes  so  if  it  went  three  kilotons  I  could 
get  a  good  yield  measurement.  So,  I'd  have  one  or  two  in  close,  and 
do  the  third  one  farther  out.  I  would  put  the  holes  where  I  was 
guessing  would  be  right  for  the  yields.  We  didn't  have  a  design  yield 
or  a  max  cred  yield  then.  We  had  a  design  yield  in  the  sense  that 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


215 


they  were  hoping  it  would  give  ten  kt,  or  whatever.  Newman  would 
have  the  hole  for  that.  But  that's  not  necessarily  the  yield  I  would 
use  to  place  the  satellite  holes. 

Carothers:  If  you  were  trying  to  get  the  yields  hydrodynami- 
cally,  that  must  have  made  the  question  of  what  the  material  around 
the  shot  point  was  important  to  you. 

Brownlee:  Oh,  yes.  That's  where  I  came  up  with  the  four 
standards.  There  is  a  supersonic  part  of  the  arrival  time  curve,  then 
it  becomes  sonic.  And  so,  the  shot  would  tell  me  what  the  sonic 
velocity  of  the  material  was.  I  had  these  curves,  four  altogether.  I 
would  say,  "Is  the  sonic  velocity  most  like  this  one?"  Then  I  would 
use  that  one  to  derive  the  yield. 

On  one  shot  the  curve  would  go  sonic  at  this  place,  and  then 
I  could  say,  "This  is  very  wet."  On  another  shot  it  would  curve  over 
at  another  place,  and  I  could  say,  "This  is  very  dry."  So,  when  I'd 
gotten  enough  facts  I  could  say,  "There,  that's  what  it  does.  The 
shot  itself  is  telling  me  the  sonic  velocity."  So,  I  was  able  to 
construct  a  particular  curve.  Now,  after  you've  done  that,  you  can 
go  back  and  restructure  all  the  other  curves  and  say,  "Well,  I  can 
have  any  kind  of  equation  of  state  here,  depending  on  how  much 
water  is  there."  Then  you  do  the  trial  and  error  fitting,  and  let  that 
try  to  tell  you  the  yield.  I  abandoned  the  four  standard  curves  in 
time,  but  I  needed  data  to  show  me  that. 

But  you're  exactly  right.  The  reason  I  got  interested  in  the 
water  content,  and  what  the  rocks  were  like,  and  the  porosity,  and 
whether  the  porosity  was  filled  with  water  or  not,  was  in  order  to 
determine  the  yield.  Hindsight  says  we  were  doing  a  better  job  of 
determining  the  yields  than  we  had  any  right  to  expect.  They  were 
really  pretty  good,  but  I  didn't  know  that.  We  finally  stopped 
because  the  rad  chem  people  said  they  were  getting  the  yields  well 
enough.  It  costs  money  to  drill  those  satellite  holes,  so  we  finally 
stopped  it.  On  the  other  hand,  it's  a  good  way  to  get  the  yield,  and 
you  really  can  do  a  pretty  good  job  in  a  medium  that  you 
understand. 

But  remember,  it's  the  shot  itself,  when  you  shoot  it,  that  tells 
you  what  the  medium  is  like.  We  never  measured,  ahead  of  time, 
the  correct  sonic  velocity.  We  determined  it  from  the  shot,  and  it 
was  always  different  from  the  pre-shot  measurement. 


2 1 6  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

That  was  the  point  I  was  trying  to  make  at  one  of  the  CEP  to 
these  lads  who  were  sitting  there,  who  persist  in  believing  that  what 
they  measure  is  the  truth.  They  insist  upon  that,  but  it's  never  been 
true  when  you  find  out  what  the  truth  really  is;  it's  never  right.  But 
there's  the,  "That's  what  I  went  to  school  to  learn.  I  did  all  the 
things  they  told  me  to  do,  so  this  must  be  the  number."  So,  you're 
quite  right.  It  was  the  hydrodynamic  yield  measurements  for  those 
earliest  shots,  more  than  for  containment,  that  forced  me  to 
understand  something  about  the  material. 

Bass:  After  the  moratorium  Los  Alamos  was  drilling  a  lot  of 
holes  in  Nevada.  They  would  drill  a  hole,  and  we  would  locate  three 
satellite  holes  for  making  hydrodynamic  yield  measurements.  Bob 
Brownlee  had  a  formula  to  locate  them,  and  we  were  working  in  the 
sonic  region,  because  we  thought  that  was  the  only  place  we  could 
really  understand.  Also,  in  that  region  we  were  far  enough  away 
that  the  range  errors  -  -  the  errors  in  distance  between  where  we 
thought  the  device  was  and  where  our  instruments  were  -  -  weren't 
killing  us.  But,  every  now  and  then  something  would  happen,  and 
they  would  end  up  putting  a  higher  yield  device  down  than  they  had 
originally  planned.  So,  we  would  be  in  the  hydrodynamic  region, 
and  we  started  getting  some  hydrodynamic  data  out  of  our  first 
satellite  hole,  which  was  supposed  to  have  been  at  around  ten 
kilobars.  Sometimes  we  were  getting  up  to  a  hundred  kilobars,  or 
even  two  or  three  hundred  kilobars. 

When  Bill  Ogle  said,  "Let's  start  this  hydro  yield  program,"  he 
gave  Sandia  carte  blanc.  Sandia  and  Los  Alamos  started  their 
program,  and  Sandia  did  all  the  experimental  work  on  that.  The 
people  in  Livermore  went  off  on  their  own,  and  started  their  own 
program.  At  one  time  Johnny  Foster  came  to  Sandia  and  asked 
Sandia  to  get  involved  in  the  Livermore  program,  but  it  never  got 
implemented.  It  was  probably  a  good  thing,  because  I  think  there 
was  too  much  work  to  be  done  as  it  was. 

Carothers:  It  was  expensive  to  drill  those  instrument  holes,  and 
Livermore  gave  up  such  measurements  as  the  chemists  developed 
their  own  methods  for  better  yield  measurements. 

Bass:  Los  Alamos  quit  it  too,  because  we  got  into  a  medium 
that  was  badly  layered  and  we  weren't  getting  decent  results.  The 
results  were  garbage,  so  we  all  quit  the  thing.  But,  before  that  we 
did  get  some  useful  data.  Our  agreement  was  this  -  -  we  would 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


217 


provide  Los  Alamos  with  time  of  arrival  information,  if  they  would 
let  us  make,  in  their  facility,  pressure  measurements.  Chabai  and  I 
wanted  the  pressure  measurements.  They  wanted  the  time  of  arrival 
data.  Art  Cox,  Bob  Brownlee,  and  I  worked  on  this  constantly.  I 
was  at  Los  Alamos  every  week  during  that  period. 

We  were  also  working  rather  closely  with  Fred  Holzer  at  that 
time,  on  Madison.  He  had  a  big  containment  program  there. 
Madison  had  a  huge  room,  and  a  drift  off  to  the  side.  He  wanted 
to  find  out  how  the  energy  partitioned  down  that,  and  could  you 
close  off  the  tunnel  with  that  drift.  He  courteously  invited  us  out 
to  look  at  the  whole  thing,  and  go  over  ail  his  data. 

Then  he  came  up  to  us  at  the  CP  one  day  and  said,  "I've  got 
something  you  ought  to  get  involved  with,"  and  he  handed  us  a 
drawing  of  the  siifer  that  they  had  come  up  with.  We  looked  at  it 
and  said,  "This  is  outstanding,"  because  at  that  time  we  were  using 
peizoelectric  crystals,  rather  than  a  cable.  That's  the  same  thing  the 
Russians  are  using  today,  although  they  finally  went  to  a  siifer. 

We  immediately  started  putting  down  slifers.  I  think  the  first 
one  went  down  within  a  week.  I  took  the  drawing  down  to  our  trailer 
area,  to  an  electronics  guy,  and  said,  "Hey,  build  us  one."  He  said, 
"I'm  not  going  to  put  those  tubes  down  there,"  because  it  was  a 
hard-tube  oscillator.  In  about  twelve  hours  he  had  one  working  with 
two  transistors.  There's  just  an  oscillator  and  a  line  driver;  that's  all 
there  is  to  it.  That  is  still  the  same  siifer  design  that  Sandia  uses  to 
this  date.  We  have  never  changed  that  design,  from  that  day  in  the 
CP  in  1  962.  When  the  Soviets  looked  at  that  they  said,  "You  guys 
are  kidding.  Is  this  how  you  measure  hydrodynamic  yield?  You  use 
this?"  because  the  transistors  were  circa  '61. 

We  put  slifers  down  right  away,  and  we  loved  them.  We  used 
them  ten  times  as  much  as  Livermore  ever  did,  and  we  still  use  them 
to  this  day.  There  are  two  slifers  installed  on  the  outside  of  the  pipe 
on  all  DNA  events,  to  measure  pipe  flow. 

Brownlee  and  I  put  them  on  the  inside  of  a  pipe  one  time  only. 
AI  Graves  gave  us  Mataco,  and  said  we  could  do  anything  we  wanted 
on  Mataco,  because  he  wanted  to  know  if  they  could  do  these  line- 
of-sight  experiments.  One  of  the  things  we  did  was  to  put  a  siifer 
cable  inside  the  pipe,  and  one  outside.  We  found  that  they  read 
exactly  the  same  thing. 


2 1 8  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

So  we  started  using  these  slifers.  Taking  the  slifer  data,  and  the 
Hugoniots  of  the  earth  materials,  you  can  do  the  integrations,  and 
put  them  all  together,  and  you  will  end  up  with  a  beautiful  pressure- 
distance  curve.  And  it  matches  the  pressure  data.  The  whole  thing 
falls  together.  It  really  falls  together  when  you  do  it  for  granite.  You 
can  end  up  with  a  pressure  curve  from  two  megabars  down  to  two 
hundred  kilobars,  in  granite,  from  the  slifer  cables,  that  match  the 
pressure  data.  It's  a  very  good  test,  and  the  sanity  check  is  solid. 
Those  all  go  together,  the  pressure  data,  the  slifer  data,  and 
everything  else  we've  ever  put  together. 

So,  we  were  making  these  time-of-arrival  measurements  on  Los 
Alamos  events,  and  compiling  the  data.  That's  one  thing  I've  always 
done  through  the  years.  I  say,  "All  these  individual  data  are  poor, 
but  when  you  put  them  together,  there's  some  sense  to  them."  And 
Brownlee's  a  real  advocate  of  this;  you  better  believe  the  data, 
because  they're  telling  you  something.  They're  always  telling  you 
something. 

We  started  putting  together  the  data  we  had  taken  on  the  LASL 
shots  where  we  were  in  the  hydrodynamic  region  and  we  discovered, 
lo  and  behold,  it  didn't  make  any  difference  what  we  were  shooting 
in.  There  was  a  straight  line  function  in  everything.  If  we  were  in 
granite,  if  we  were  in  alluvium,  if  we  were  in  tuff,  it  made  no 
difference  in  the  strong  shock  region.  All  these  materials  worked 
the  same  way.  What  we  had  found  is  now  called  the  Universal 
Relation.  Now,  marble  is  an  exception.  There  are  exceptions 
always  to  rules  like  that. 

And  this  has  been  ignored,  I  think  for  one  reason.  The 
Livermore  jealousy  concerning  the  Los  Alamos  hydro  yield  program 
has  been  incredible.  Livermore  has  been  very  negative  on  that 
program  from  the  very  beginning,  because  they  have  been  oriented 
more  toward  seismic  measurements  for  yield.  So,  they  have  not 
been  much  in  favor  of  the  cortex  measurement  program  and  the 
slifer  program. 

Incidently,  I  think  cortex  is  the  greatest  sales  job  in  the  history 
of  the  program.  If  the  Lord  above  had  told  you  how  to  do  this,  he 
would  have  said,  "Cortex  first,  and  then  slifer  is  the  improvement 
over  cortex,"  because  slifer  is  continuous,  and  cortex  is  discrete, 
and  not  too  solid.  Now,  the  new  cortex  gets  rid  of  this  problem  by 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


219 


looking  for  the  phase  change  of  a  standing  wave  on  a  cable.  Fran 
Porzell  had  done  that  on  Rainier.  It  didn't  work  on  Rainier,  but  it 
was  the  same  thing. 

We  first  started  the  idea  of  using  slifers  for  hydrodynamic  yield 
on  the  PNE  and  the  Threshold  Test  Ban  Treaty,  using  this  Universal 
Relation.  It  says  that  shock  propagation  in  most  geologic  materials 
can  be  described  by  one  power-law  formula.  It's  called  the 
Universal  Relationship,  or  the  Los  Alamos  Relationship.  Al  Chabai 
and  I  developed  it,  and  Los  Alamos  has  used  it  ever  since. 

We  were  pushing  this  as  the  way  to  measure  the  yield  of  PNE 
events.  The  reason  you  have  to  use  the  Universal  Relationship  on 
PNE's  is  that  you  don't  know  where  the  source  is.  The  treaty  we 
had,  and  still  do  have,  with  the  Soviet  Union  says  that  the  canister 
can  be,  then  ten  meters  long,  now  twelve  meters  long.  And,  they 
can  put  the  device  anywhere  they  want  in  those  twelve  meters. 

Carothers:  You  mean,  you  don't  know  where  the  center  of 
energy  is. 

Bass:  That's  right.  That's  a  better  way  to  put  it.  So,  your 
system  has  to  tell  you  where  the  center  of  energy  is.  This  is  where 
you  use  the  Universal  Relation,  because  you  know  what  the  slope  of 
the  function  must  be.  All  you  have  to  do  is  make  a  measurement 
in  the  emplacement  hole,  although  it  also  works  in  a  satellite  hole. 
In  the  emplacement  hole  you  don't  need  to  know  where  the  source 
is  below  you,  but  you  do  know  from  the  Universal  Relation  that  the 
slope  of  the  shot  curve  has  to  be  a  certain  value.  Theoretically  it 
should  be  0.4,  on  a  log-log  plot.  It  turns  out  it  0.459,  or  something 
like  that,  because  theory  doesn't  work  here.  It's  just  strictly 
accidental  empiricism,  or  quackery.  That's  a  proper  dictionary 
definition  of  an  empiric,  isn't  it  -  -  a  quack?  Anyhow,  the  Universal 
Relationship  works  beautifully  for  this. 

So,  that's  where  PNE  monitoring  became  possible,  because  we 
could,  through  the  use  of  the  Universal  Relationship,  and  with  the 
proper  spacing  of  the  cable  above  the  canister  so  we  would  know  we 
were  in  the  hydrodynamic  region,  get  the  yield  for  any  event  we 
wanted  to  measure.  If  you  had  a  satellite  hole  that  went  deeper  than 
the  device  emplacement,  that  would  tell  you  directly,  but  at  that 
time  there  were  not  going  to  be  any  satellite  holes.  Everything  on 
the  PNE  treaty  was  main  hole,  because  it  costs  a  million  dollars  to 
drill  a  satellite  hole. 


220  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Rambo:  I  was  hired  on,  in  November  of  1  963,  by  John  Eilis, 
who  was  then  in  charge  of  a  small  group  developing,  as  a  group,  how 
to  measure  siifer  yields  for  the  nuclear  test  program.  As  I  got 
familiar  with  the  operation  I  would  design  where  they  would  be 
located.  I  was  one  of  the  first  people  to  say,  "We've  got  to  run  the 
cable  below  the  working  point,  so  we  can  see  the  first  crush  on  it." 
We  wanted  the  first  arrival  because  the  elevation  of  that  first  arrival 
is  where  we  thought  the  shot  horizon  would  be.  That  was  of  interest 
for  us  because  it  would  tell  where  the  working  point  was,  and  there 
was  a  lot  of  uncertainty  in  that. 

Carothers:  You  know  where  the  emplacement  hole  started,  on 
the  surface,  and  it  may  wander  a  bit,  but  not  much.  Then  you  know 
where  the  device  itself  was  put,  rather  accurately. 

Rambo:  Fairly  accurately,  although  in  the  early  days  it  wasn't 
always  stated  if  they  changed  that  location,  and  other  times  that 
information  did  not  get  back  to  us.  On  the  satellite  holes  we  thought 
the  location  accuracy  was  about  two  feet  per  thousand  feet  of  depth, 
on  the  average.  The  Sperry  Sun  people  did  those  surveys.  They 
would  run  two  or  three  runs,  and  we'd  get  different  answers  from 
each  run.  Two  feet  per  thousand  feet  was  average,  but  it  could 
exceed  that.  You  could  get  systematically  bad  information.  Occa¬ 
sionally  you'd  get  one  survey  that  was  five  or  six  feet  different  from 
the  others. 

So,  there  was  some  uncertainty  there.  There  was  also  some 
uncertainty  in  the  depth,  and  there  was  the  distance  from  the 
emplacement  hole  to  the  satellite  hole;  you  had  to  make  sure  that 
was  correct.  One  time  I  discovered  that  my  data  wouldn't  fit  no 
matter  what  I  tried  to  do  to  it.  So  I  went  back  to  an  aerial 
photograph,  found  the  size  of  the  pad,  and  then  was  able  to 
determine  how  far  away  the  satellite  hole  was.  The  surveyors  had 
made  a  ten  foot  error.  Then  I  was  able  to  analyze  that  data.  That 
was  the  kind  of  thing  you  could  run  up  against  from  time  to  time. 

In  those  days  we  were  usually  using  one  satellite  hole.  There 
was  one  or  two  shots  that  had  three  holes,  but  it  was  usually  just  one, 
and  we  didn't  always  know  where  the  satellite  hole  was.  So,  there 
were  surveys,  and  sometimes  there  were  errors  in  where  the  cables 
might  be  located.  So,  we  would  make  corrections  after  the  fact  to 
our  data. 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


221 


Carothers:  After  people  told  you  what  the  yield  was  supposed 
to  be? 

Rambo:  I've  been  accused  of  that  quite  often,  so  that  question 
doesn't  come  as  a  surprise. 

The  results  were  quite  sensitive  to  separation.  A  few  feet  made 
a  difference.  At  the  low  yields  we  were  doing  in  those  days,  it  was 
very  sensitive.  In  fact,  I  could  easily  be  in  the  thirty  to  fifty  percent 
range  sometimes,  certainly  thirty  percent.  When  you  made  the 
statement  that  if  I  knew  the  yield  I  could  determine  a  good  slifer 
yield,  sometimes  I  did  that,  but  more  or  less  to  determine  what  went 
wrong  with  the  experiment.  I  was  looking  for  systematic  problems. 
I'd  look  back  at  the  yield,  and  I'd  say,  "In  order  to  get  this  yield, 
what  would  I  have  needed  to  change?"  And  so  I  would  learn 
something  about  the  experimental  procedure,  hopefully,  to  im¬ 
prove  it.  But  I  can't  say  I  was  completely  oblivious  to  the  fact  that 
I  sometimes  knew  what  the  yield  was  before  I  published  the  yield 
that  I  had  gotten. 

Carothers:  If  you  were  going  to  do  that  kind  of  measurement, 
you  needed  to  know  something  about  the  material  properties  of  the 
medium  in  which  you  were  shooting  -  -  whether  it  was  tuff,  or 
alluvium,  or  below  the  water  table,  or  whatever.  How  did  you  get 
that  kind  of  information?  When  you  started  the  slifer  measurements 
they  weren't  logging  the  holes  were  they? 

Rambo:  We  weren't  getting  anything.  The  geologists  would  go 
down,  look  at  the  cuttings,  and  say  things  like,  "There's  rocks  down 
there,"  or,  "This  is  highly  porous  stuff".  They  weren't  very  good 
descriptions  for  what  I  needed. 

We  had  four  or  five  curves  that  we  would  compare  our  data  to, 
to  get  the  yield.  It's  called  similar  explosion  scaling.  These  curves 
were  labeled  Wet,  Damp,  Dry,  Very  Dry.  The  tail  of  these  curves 
would  fold  over  flatter  if  they  were  dry,  and  they  would  be  steeper 
at  the  end  if  they  were  wet.  I  would  take  these  curves,  and  I  would 
compare  the  tails  of  these  things  after  the  fact,  and  with  some 
knowledge  that  we  were  in  a  wet  hole  or  a  dry  hole  area,  I  would  ask 
the  geologists  for  what  specific  information  they  had.  From  that  I 
would  try  to  figure  out  which  curve  was  the  one  I  was  to  use.  It  is 
not  the  best  way,  and  it  is  certainly  not  as  good  a  way  as  we  do 
nowadays. 


222  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Carothers:  Bob  Brownlee  did  measurements  of  that  sort  for 
some  time  for  Los  Alamos.  Did  you  have  any  contact  with  him  at 
all? 


Rambo:  No,  I  don't  think  so;  not  in  those  days.  The  curves 
I  was  just  mentioning  came  from  Los  Alamos,  and  they  had  come 
from  calculations  they  had  done.  We  inherited  those  nomencla¬ 
tures.  We  were  at  least  self-consistent  in  terms,  between  the 
Laboratories. 

Carothers:  Why  did  you  use  satellite  holes,  which  are  expen¬ 
sive?  Why  not  put  the  slifer  cables  down  the  emplacement  hole? 

Rambo:  We  did.  We  did  them  in  both  places,  but  what  was 
happening  during  those  days  was  we  were  usually  measuring  fairly 
low  yields,  and  there  were  often  large  diagnostic  line-of-sight  pipes, 
at  that  time.  Close  in  to  the  device,  where  you  needed  to  be  with 
the  slifer  cables,  there  was  a  lot  of  radiation  and  energy  that  was 
going  up  to  hit  doghouses  and  things  like  that.  Often  what  I'd  see 
on  the  slifer  cables  was  doghouses  exploding.  I  could  see  all  this 
detail  going  on,  but  it  wasn't  very  conducive  to  doing  a  good  yield 
measurement.  So,  I  kept  pushing  for  satellite  holes.  That  was  an 
additional  expense,  and  I  think  toward  the  end  of  this  early  era  they 
were  trying  to  save  money,  and  the  other  methods  of  yield 
determination  were  getting  better,  so  slifers  sort  of  ceased  to  exist 
at  Livermore,  probably  around  1964  to  1965. 

Carothers:  What's  the  difference  between  a  slifer  and  a  cortex 
measurement? 

Rambo:  Really  nothing,  in  terms  of  what  the  data  looks  like. 
In  a  slifer,  the  cable  is  the  inductive  leg  of  a  tuned  oscillator.  When 
the  shock  crushes  the  cable,  and  shorts  it,  the  inductance  changes, 
which  changes  the  oscillator  frequency.  Los  Alamos,  at  a  later  time, 
decided  to  use  a  slightly  different  way  to  measure  the  cable  length. 
What  they  would  do  was  send  an  electrical  signal  down  the  cable,  let 
it  reflect  off  the  crush  point,  and  come  back.  So,  they  would 
measure  the  transit  time.  This  is  what  the  cortex  method  is. 
Essentially  we  measured  the  same  thing,  but  by  slightly  different 
methods. 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


223 


There  are  some  things  that  a  slifer  does  in  sensing  a  change 
more  rapidly  in  the  speed  of  the  crush  going  up  the  cable,  because 
you  don't  have  to  wait  for  the  transit  time  of  the  signal.  There  are 
some  advantages  to  the  slifer,  and  they're  still  being  used  on  the 
tunnel  shots.  I  am  not  sure  which  method  is  better.  I  think  cortex 
is  a  little  bit  freer  of  noise,  and  in  some  instances,  because  the 
technology  of  electronics  have  changed,  it's  better  in  that  sense.  It 
suffers  from  the  same  problems  we  had  in  the  early  days  of  doing 
slifers.  It's  just  that  when  they  brought  more  information  to  bear 
on  the  problem  in  these  recent  times,  it's  a  little  easier  to  get  better 
solutions  from  the  data.  But  there  are  still  problems  that  are  very 
hard  to  deal  with. 

I  have  looked  at  a  lot  of  data  where  I  would  see  a  time  of  arrival 
up  above  the  device  which  seemed  shorter  than  it  did  off  on  the 
horizontal,  where  we  were  looking  at  the  horizontal  arrival  of  the 
shockwave.  Then  after  a  while,  the  two  curves  from  those  locations 
would  come  together.  This  was  two  separate  cables,  of  course.  I 
saw  that  more  often  than  not.  If  there  was  a  baffle,  or  some  sort  of 
metal  plate,  or  something  like  that  above  the  device,  it  looked  like 
the  shock  was  coming  from  that  source.  Or  if  there  was  a  large 
opening  for  a  brief  distance  above  the  device  you  could  almost  see 
that  looking  like  a  source. 

So,  there  was  this  problem  of  where  the  center  of  energy 
looked  like  it  was,  very  close-in.  People  like  to  measure  close-in, 
near  the  center;  the  material  properties  don't  matter  as  much  there 
because  of  the  very  high  pressures.  But  what  does  matter  is  the 
minute  geometry  of  what's  going  on  with  the  explosion,  in  terms  of 
where  the  energy  flows.  So,  you've  got  a  trade-off  taking  place  at 
that  point.  It's  almost  better  to  look  at  the  data  farther  out,  but  at 
that  point  you're  worried  about  material  properties  more. 

If  you  looked  at  the  entire  curve  on  these  things,  sometimes 
you  could  determine  what  errors  you  were  looking  at.  If  your  cable 
was  further  down  than  you  thought  it  was,  you  could  see  that  kind 
of  error,  because  it  was  a  constant  difference  from  what  you  should 
be  reading.  And  if  you  were  comparing  it  to  an  emplacement  hole, 
sometimes  you  could  determine  that.  If  the  satellite  hole  were 
farther  away  than  you  thought,  you  could  compare  it  to  the 
emplacement  hole,  and  sometimes  you  would  get  a  feel  for  that  kind 
of  an  error.  These  were  all  techniques,  and  some  of  them  I  had 
developed  in  the  early  days,  like  looking  at  where  the  first  crush 


224  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

point  was  on  the  satellite  hole  to  try  and  iron  out  some  of  those 
difficulties.  A  lot  of  that  is  now  taking  place  more  professionally 
with  current  methods  than  I  was  able  to  do. 

The  earth  in  which  the  energy  of  the  detonation  is  deposited  is 
not  an  infinite,  homogeneous  material,  unfortunately  for  those  who 
would  calculate  and  predict  what  will  occur.  The  various  layers  of 
rocks  of  different  properties,  the  faults,  the  presence  or  absence  of 
water  all  affect  the  ground  response.  One  example  is  the  surface 
ground  motion  produced  by  an  event  called  Tybo,  which  was 
detonated  in  an  emplacement  hole  in  Pahute  Mesa.  The  surface 
motion,  and  the  measured  ground  shock  was,  unexpectedly,  the 
highest  that  had  ever  been  seen  at  the  Test  Site.  John  Rambo  tried 
to  model  the  geologic  setting,  and  in  his  calculations  determine  why 
this  should  have  been  so. 

Rambo:  I  started  to  wonder  about  these  peculiar  ground 
motions  when  there  were  two  shots  that  were  fired  quite  close 
together  physically,  and  also  in  time.  One  was  nine  kiiotons,  and 
it  was  located  below  the  water  table  at  about  six  hundred  and  eighty- 
eight  meters.  The  upper  one  was  at  about  four  hundred  and  thirty- 
some  meters,  and  it  was  about  thirty-five  kiiotons.  The  interesting 
thing  was  that  the  free  surface  velocity  for  the  deeper  one  was  about 
one  point  one  meters  per  second,  and  the  free  surface  velocity  for 
the  upper  one,  which  was  higher  in  yield  and  much  closer  to  the 
surface,  was  about  one  meter  per  second.  These  were  actually 
measured,  and  because  there  was  about  thirty  seconds  between  the 
detonations  it  was  easy  to  see  separate  signals. 

Carothers:  The  thirty-five  kiiotons  closer  to  the  surface  gave 
less  motion  than  the  nine  kiiotons  deeper  down? 

Rambo:  That's  right.  And  so,  that  was  certainly  a  puzzle. 

Carothers:  No  puzzle.  The  lower  one  was  below  the  water 
table.  The  coupling  is  higher  there. 

Rambo:  But  above  the  water  you  had  all  this  porous  material, 
for  quite  a  ways.  The  shock  was  running  through  much  more  porous 
material  from  the  more  deeply  emplaced  lower  yield  shot  than  the 
shock  was  from  the  upper  yield  shot.  The  perception  at  that  time 
was  that  this  was  something  to  wonder  about. 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


225 


It  turns  out,  from  what  we  saw  in  the  calculations,  that  being 
below  the  water  table  tended  to  give  what  I  call  a  focusing  effect  that 
changed  the  attenuation  rate  of  the  signal,  even  though  you're  going 
through  the  same  porous  material.  The  shock  is  being  absorbed 
right  above  the  water  table;  there  is  quite  a  lot  of  attenuation  at  that 
point.  But  there  is  another  effect.  The  shape  of  the  wave  shows 
where  it  comes  from,  or  where  it  looks  like  it  comes  from,  and  that 
is  important.  If  it  becomes  more  planer,  it's  going  to  attenuate  less 
than  the  spherical  wave  you  get  if  everything  is  a  uniform  medium. 

I  didn't  know  this  until  we  did  the  Tybo  shot.  That  was  an  event 
that  had  very  high  ground  motion.  It  was  about  nine  point  eight 
meters  per  second. 

Carothers:  That  is  the  highest  ground  motion  we  have  ever 
seen  on  a  contained  shot  in  Nevada,  if  I  remember  correctly. 

Rambo:  That's  right.  Tybo  was  certainly  a  mystery  because  of 
the  high  ground  motion.  There  was  at  one  time  some  TV  footage 
of  what  it  looked  like  from  the  side,  when  it  went  off.  It  showed  this 
huge  mound  rising  up,  and  you  could  see  the  curvature  quite  clearly. 
The  containment  scientist  related  to  me  that  it  looked  like  it  was 
going  to  come  out  of  the  ground.  It  just  looked  like  a  cratering  shot, 
and  gave  you  that  impression,  it  was  so  rounded. 

So,  there  was  a  lot  of  interest  in  why  this  could  have  occurred. 
I  went  back  and  I  ran  fifty  or  more  1-D  calculations,  and  I  couldn't 
get  anything  close  to  what  happened,  no  matter  what  I  did.  Even 
if  I  ran  it  saturated  to  the  surface,  I  couldn't  get  anything  like  that. 
And,  it  just  was  not  in  the  realm  of  material  properties,  and  I  tried 
a  lot  of  them.  Even  increasing  the  yield  to  the  maximum  credible 
yield,  and  going  to  extreme  material  properties  I  could  not  get  a 
match  to  that  kind  of  a  signal. 

Carothers:  That  merely  illustrates  the  deficiencies  of  your 
code. 

Rambo:  You're  right,  and  the  deficiency  I  found  out  about  was 
that  a  1-D  calculation  didn't  take  into  account  a  flat  water  table 
effect  in  the  soil. 

Carothers:  Of  course  not,  because  in  a  1-D  calculation  the 
device  sits  in  a  sphere  of  saturated  material.  So,  the  shock  goes  out 
spherically,  and  it  doesn't  care  what  the  interfaces  are,  except  a 
little  energy  may  get  reflected  back,  and  it  stays  spherical. 


226  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Rambo:  You  did  a  better  job  than  I  could  do  to  describe  it. 

To  look  at  the  surface  signals  on  Tybo  we  had  surface  arrays 
that  went  off  in  a  couple  of  different  directions.  Without  those 
arrays  I  doubt  if  we  would  have  been  able  to  unravel  it.  Looking  at 
that  data,  you  could  see  that  the  plastic  part  of  the  wave  was 
traveling  in  different  pathways  than  the  elastic  part  which  was  just 
going  straight  through  the  formation  on  constant  rays.  From  that 
I  got  the  idea  that  a  2-D  calculation  would  probably  show  the  effect, 
So  I  switched  over  to  a  2-D  calculation,  and  I  definitely  saw  the 
effect;  there  was  at  least  a  factor  of  two  between  a  1-D  and  2-D 
calculation. 

It's  a  Snell's  law  kind  of  an  effect.  What  happens  is  that  there 
is  a  change  in  the  shape  of  the  outgoing  wave  when  it  hits  this  porous 
surface.  It  becomes  very  broad  and  very  shallow,  so  it  looks  like  the 
source  is  much  deeper.  That  means  it's  going  to  attenuate  less 
because  it's  progressing  now  more  like  a  plane  wave  rather  than  like 
a  highly  spherically  divergent  one.  It's  still  spherical,  of  course,  but 
it's  not  as  divergent  as  it  was,  because  the  radius  is  now  much  bigger. 
The  calculations  showed  this  enhancement,  so  you  get  a  much 
higher  free  surface  velocity  then  you  would  with  normal  spherical 
kinds  of  geometries. 

I  think  that  was  the  first  time  we  had  discovered  that  this  huge 
variety  of  ground  motions  could  indeed  be  due  to  a  focused  effect 
from  the  layering.  In  the  case  of  Tybo  it  happened  to  be  the  water 
table,  but  there  could  be  certainly  other  cases  where  you'd  see 
things  of  that  nature.  When  you  go  from  something  that  is  saturated 
to  something  that's  highly  porous,  and  maybe  there's  some  strength 
in  that  rock  as  well,  the  the  signal  is  not  attenuated  very  much  in  the 
porous  material,  and  so  you  may  get  a  focusing  effect. 

Carothers:  This  effect  occurs  when  you're  going  from  a 
medium  with  a  relatively  high  sonic  velocity  into  something  where 
it's  slower?  Or  into  a  medium  with  a  higher  index  of  refraction,  if 
you  like. 

Rambo:  That's  exactly  the  right  analogy.  It  tends  to  be  most 
pronounced  when  the  interface  is  between  about  twenty  to  forty 
meters  per  kt  to  the  one-third  than  at  other  distances.  At  very  high 
stresses  the  shock  wave  in  the  saturated  and  unsaturated  materials 
give  about  the  same  velocity,  because  they're  so  high  up  on  the 
stress  curve,  or  up  on  the  compressibility  curve,  that  the  velocities 


Energy  Coupling  and  Partition 


227 


look  very  similar  and  you  don't  get  the  big  velocity  differences, 
usually.  If  the  interface  is  much  farther  out,  then  the  distance  in 
which  the  shock  wave  has  to  change  its  attenuation  is  much  less,  and 
so  you  don't  see  quite  the  effect.  But  around  the  twenty  to  forty 
meters  per  kt  to  the  one-third  you  can  really  see  a  pretty  good  effect 
from  that,  on  the  ground  motion.  At  least  that's  what  the 
calculations  tend  to  show. 


229 


9 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 

When  a  nuclear  device  is  detonated  it  deposits  a  very  large 
amount  of  energy  into  a  rather  small  volume.  That  deposition  of 
energy  produces  a  volume  of  extremely  hot,  extremely  high  pres¬ 
sure  gases  from  the  surrounding  materials.  These  generate  a  very 
strong  shock,  which  begins  to  move  outward  from  the  shot  point. 
That  shock  is  strong  enough  that  as  it  moves  out  it  vaporizes  some 
rock,  melts  more  rock,  plasticallly  deforms  still  more,  and  finally 
weakens  to  a  place  where  only  elastic  movements  of  the  rock  take 
place. 

What  is  left  behind  after  the  passage  of  the  shock  is  a  more  or 
less  spherical  cavity  that  contains  the  radioactive  debris  from  the 
explosion,  and  vaporized  and  melted  materials  that  contain  some 
fraction  of  the  energy  released.  Fundamental  to  the  understanding 
of  how  the  containment  of  nuclear  explosions  occurs  is  knowledge 
about  the  formation,  the  growth,  and  the  eventualy  decay  of  the 
temperature  and  pressure  of  the  post-shot  cavity. 

As  with  so  many  other  things  in  the  field  of  containment,  direct 
information  and  data  about  cavity  formation  and  the  conditions  in 
it  are  extremely  difficult  to  come  by.  Much  of  what  is  believed  is 
derived  from  measurements  at  a  distance  where  the  instruments  can 
survive  the  shock  passage,  from  observations  on  post-shot  reentries 
made  through  existing  or  newly  mined  passages,  and  from  calcula¬ 
tions  which  try  to  match  the  data  and  observations  there  are  and 
which  then  hopefully  give  insight  into  other  phenomena  not  directly 
observable. 


Cavity  Growth 

The  formation  of  the  underground  cavity  is  an  impressive 
phenomenon  to  consider.  In  a  tenth  of  a  second  or  so  the  rock  around 
the  point  of  detonation  of  a  one  kiloton  device  is  moved  and  altered 
sufficiently  to  create  a  roughly  spherical  void  that  is  of  the  order  of 
a  hundred  feet  in  diameter.  For  the  Cannikin  event,  which  had  a 
yield  of  a  few  megatons,  the  formation  of  the  cavity  took  somewhat 


230 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


longer,  perhaps  as  much  as  most  of  a  second,  but  at  the  end  of  that 
time  some  20,000,000  tons  of  rock  had  been  displaced  to  make  a 
cavity  in  which  the  Empire  State  Building  could  stand.  The  relative 
importance  of  the  various  mechanisms  that  cause  the  cavity  growth 
and  formation  is  still  debatable,  although  the  general  outline  of  what 
occurs  is  gennerally  agreed  upon. 

Patch:  I  think  the  shock  and  the  gases  are  not  equally  important 
in  the  growth  of  the  cavity,  but  I  think  it's  a  matter  of  the  timing. 
In  some  sense,  initially  the  cavity  is  driven  by  the  gas  pressure  inside. 
That's  what  launches  the  shock.  But  if  you  look  at  the  calculated 
pressures  inside  the  cavity,  because  of  the  r-cubed  effect,  the  cavity 
doesn't  have  to  expand  very  much  before  the  volume  goes  up 
tremendously,  and  the  pressure  is  forced  to  drop.  And  so  a  great 
deal  of  the  motion  of  the  cavity  is  really  a  coasting,  momentum 
driven  motion.  The  fact  that  the  cavity  pressures  end  up  at 
overburden,  give  or  take  factors  of  two,  is  somewhat  fortuitous, 
because  we've  done  calculations  for  other,  partially  decoupled 
situations,  where  you  don't  get  anything  like  overburden  pressure 
in  the  cavity,  depending  on  how  it's  decoupled.  It  just  turns  out, 
for  the  strengths  in  the  rocks  we  have,  and  the  way  things  work  out, 
that's  kind  of  where  you  end  up. 

An  example  of  where  a  cavity  does  not  end  up  at  the  overbur¬ 
den  pressure  is  an  explosion  in  water,  where  you  can  get  a 
tremendous  overexpansion,  and  effectively  a  very  low  pressure 
inside  the  cavity.  It  isn't  smart  enough  to  realize  that  the  overbur¬ 
den  pressure  around  it  is  such  that  it  ought  to  stop,  and  it  keeps  on 
going  until  it  gets  to  some  very  low  pressure  inside,  depending  on 
the  depth  and  the  yield,  and  so  on.  Of  course,  it  then  gets  smaller, 
since  the  outside  pressure  is  higher  than  that  inside.  Actually,  such 
a  bubble,  or  cavity  oscillates  in  size,  predictably.  So,  I  think  it  can 
work  out  either  way. 

Carothers:  In  the  very  early  times  after  the  detonation  the 
pressure  of  the  shock  generated  must  overwhelm  any  kind  of 
material  properties  or  strengths  of  the  rock. 

Rambo:  I  think  that's  usually  the  case  in  the  megabar  type  of 
regime.  I've  heard  some  people  now  casting  doubt  on  that,  so  I  did 
some  equational  things  that  relate  to  the  slope  of  the  shock  velocity 
and  particle  velocity  curves.  Material  properties  make  a  difference 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow  23 1 

overall,  but  most  rocks  tend  to  look  pretty  much  the  same  in  that 
high  pressure  regime.  You  don't  see  any  big  differences;  the  slopes 
of  the  curves  in  a  granite  look  very  much  like  the  slopes  of  the  ones 
for  a  weak  alluvium.  So,  there's  a  tendency  to  say,  "Well,  they're 
all  going  to  be  the  same."  But  there  are  elements,  or  there  are 
different  things  out  there,  that  do  look  different. 

Carothers:  What's  your  view  of  what  drives  the  cavity  to  its 
final  size? 

Rambo:  My  view  is,  and  I  take  most  of  it  again  from 
calculations,  is  that  this  enormous  shockwave  that's  generated,  with 
a  very  high  gas  pressure  that  sits  behind  it,  gives  momentum  to  the 
material  as  the  shock  is  traveling  outward.  From  what  I've  seen  in 
the  best  physics  that  we  know,  in  terms  of  calculations,  is  that  the 
cavity  pressure  then  starts  to  decrease  rather  rapidly. 

Carothers:  Well,  the  rock  vapor  condenses  fairly  early. 

Rambo:  It  condenses,  but  that  happens  at  a  later  time.  Even 
at  very  early  times,  when  that  rock  vapor  hasn't  even  had  a  chance 
to  condense  yet,  the  cavity  pressures  are  down  below  where  they 
can  have  a  strong  effect  on  pushing  the  material  outward.  What's 
happening  to  the  ground  around  the  device  is  that  you've  imparted 
a  large  momentum  to  it,  and  so  it  wants  to  go  out.  Then  it  begins 
to  decouple  itself  from  the  cavity  pressure  behind  it,  and  about  all 
it  seems  to  know  is  that  it  has  this  big  momentum,  and  so  it  is  moving 
out.  As  it  continues  to  move  out,  it's  encountering  resistive  forces, 
and  the  peak  of  the  shockwave  that's  imparting  this  momentum  is 
beginning  to  decay  rather  rapidly.  Pretty  soon  this  momentum  is 
fighting  the  restoring  forces  of  the  overburden,  and  the  shear 
strength  of  the  material,  as  the  cavity  wall  material  trys  to  get  itself 
into  a  wider,  thinner  volume  as  it  expands.  Eventually,  the  material 
reaches  the  point  where,  at  maximum  cavity  radius,  the  restoring 
forces  which  are  wanting  to  push  it  back  are  as  strong  as  the  final 
momentum  forces  that  were  pushing  it  out. 

Carothers:  Nort,  the  detonation  releases  an  enormous  amount 
of  energy  into  a  quite  small  volume,  the  shock  starts  going  out, 
putting  a  lot  of  energy  into  the  rock,  which  then  coasts  out  to  some 
place  determined  by  how  strong  the  rock  is.  Is  that  what  you  think 
happens? 


232 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Rimer:  That's  containment  lore.  Basically,  the  rock  doesn't 
actually  coast.  I've  heard,  ever  since  1  came  to  S-Cubed,  the  story 
that  you  start  the  walls  of  the  cavity  moving,  and  it  doesn't  matter 
how  you  modeled  the  cavity  pressure.  "The  cavity  just  goes  and 
coasts,  and  keeps  going  until  the  rock  strength  stops  it."  That's  not 
so.  Cavity  pressure  is  an  important  driver.  What's  in  the  cavity, 
whether  it's  steam,  or  the  rock  is  dry,  or  whatever,  is  an  important 
driver,  and  it  does  control,  to  some  extent,  how  long  the  cavity 
grows.  If  I  were  to  rate  three  things  of  importance  to  cavity  growth, 
one  is  the  strength  of  the  rock,  two  is  the  cavity  equation  of  state, 
or  what's  in  the  cavity.  Three  is  gas  porosity,  but  gas  porosity  is  an 
order  of  magnitude  less  important  than  strength,  for  the  final  cavity 
size.  That's  gas  porosity,  as  distinct  from  water  saturated  porosity. 

Outside  the  cavity  region  the  details  of  the  rock  volumetric 
equation  of  state,  other  than  gas  porosity  crush-up,  are  relatively 
unimportant  to  containment.  They're  important  if  you're  doing 
something  like  trying  to  determine  the  hydrodynamic  yield.  They're 
important  there,  but  if  you're  interested  in  containment  based  on 
displacements  of  the  rock,  and  how  much  plastic  work  you  do  in  the 
rock  to  form  these  residual  stresses,  they're  not  that  important. 

Cavity  Size,  or  Radius 

A  number  which  is  often  referred  to  in  discussing  containment 
is  the  cavity  radius.  When  the  term  “radius”  is  used,  the  implication 
is  that  a  sphere  is  being  referred  to.  That  is  arguably  not  the  right 
term  or  implication,  since  cavities  are  only  approximately  spheri¬ 
cal,  but  it  is  imbedded  in  the  literature  and  the  available  data.  The 
quoted  radius  is  generally  determined  by  post-shot  drillbacks  which 
are  made  to  retrieve  samples  of  the  once  molten  rock  for  analysis  by 
the  radiochemists.  The  place  where  the  drill  first  encounters  the 
radioactive  material,  if  known  in  space,  can  be  used  to  determine  a 
distance  from  where  the  device  was  before  detonation.  If  the 
assumption  is  made  that  the  cavity  grows  spherically,  with  the 
device  as  the  center,  a  radius  can  be  defined.  Both  the  assumption 
that  the  cavity  is  spherical,  and  that  the  position  of  the  device  is  the 
center  are  suspect,  and  probably  wrong. 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow  233 

The  predicted  cavity  radius  is  used  as  one  of  the  means  of 
selecting  a  appropriate  depth  of  burial.  Also,  it  is  generally  thought 
that  for  a  given  yield  a  larger  cavity  is  better  for  containment  since 
that  indicates  a  weaker  rock  that  allows  more  cavity  expansion,  and 
therefore  a  lower  residua!  gas  pressure  in  the  cavity. 

Kunkle:  One  of  the  things  I  have  been  interested  in  is  cavity 
sizes.  That  is,  what  data  do  we  have  that  might  be  able  to  determine 
the  volume,  and  define  the  shape  of  the  cavity.  Is  it  really  spherical, 
or  is  it  perhaps  non-spherical?  What  is  its  volume,  and  its  actual 
location.  Does  it  float  upward  or  downward  with  respect  to  the  shot 
center,  and  how  is  the  volume  of  the  crater,  if  one  appears  on  the 
surface,  connected  to  the  volume  of  that  initial  cavity?  One  of  the 
reasons  I've  been  interested  in  these  things  is  that  they  are  some  of 
the  measurable  phenomena  of  the  detonation.  You  can  go  out  and 
see  a  crater  in  the  desert.  You  can  drill  back,  and  find  the  lower 
hemisphere  of  a  cavity.  These  are  some  of  the  few  things  we  can 
actually  measure  about  what  happens  when  a  shot  goes  off. 

Many  of  the  other  things  we  would  like  to  know,  we  just  know 
very  poorly.  For  example,  the  shape  of  the  rubble  column,  the 
chimney,  under  the  ground  is  largely  unknown.  We  have  in  the  past 
drilled  into  a  few  rubble  columns  in  four  and  five  different  places  to 
try  to  learn  something  about  their  shape,  but  that  only  tells  us  about 
that  one,  and  they  may  be  very  individual  for  all  we  know.  Such 
things  we  know  little  about,  but  we  do  know  some  things  fairly  well, 
such  as  the  lower  radius  of  the  cavity,  which  we  tag  from  our  rad- 
chem  drill  backs. 

Carothers:  There  are  three  cavities  that  we  know  a  fair  amount 
about.  One  is  Rainier,  where  they  did  an  extensive  post-shot 
reentry  and  drilling  program  during  the  moratorium.  One  is 
Gnome,  which  had  a  standing,  partially  collapsed  cavity,  where  they 
reentered  and  could  walk  around  in  it.  And  one  is  Salmon,  which 
had  a  standing  cavity,  where  they  could  lower  a  television  camera 
into  the  cavity  and  look  at  it.  The  Salmon  cavity  was  spherical.  It 
had  what  could  properly  be  called  a  radius,  and  a  center.  Gnome 
and  Rainier  were  both  flattened  on  the  bottom,  with  a  bigger 
dimension  at  the  waist  than  that  inferred  in  the  upward  direction. 
Of  course,  there  was  surely  an  instant  in  time  when  they  were  rather 
spherical. 


234  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Kunkle:  There  must  be  some  era  when  that  was  true.  It  is  a 
rather  fortuitous  circumstances  that  we  have  in  the  past  often  shot 
in  quite  uniform  material.  These  shots  have  been  located  mostly  in 
Area  3,  in  the  Sandpile  area,  which  has  a  very  uniform  material.  It's 
hard  to  conceive  of  shooting  in  a  more  uniform  geologic  setting. 

Carothers:  And  yet  that's  an  area  where  there  are  discrepan¬ 
cies  in  what  you  would  normally  expect  the  cavity  radius  to  be. 
Some  of  those  cavities  are  reported  as  unusually  large. 

Kunkle:  Yes,  there's  an  area  in  southern  Area  3,  in  the 
alluvium,  which  seems  prone  to  relatively  large  cavities.  But  there 
seems  to  be  a  gradation  in  the  mechanical  properties  of  the  alluvium 
in  Area  3  as  you  move  from  the  north  to  the  south,  which  is  up  along 
the  drainage  toward  Yucca  Lake.  The  larger  cavity  radii  may  reflect 
some  change  in  the  material.  There  seems  to  be  a  general 
relationship  between  the  scaled  size  of  the  cavity  and  the  material 
it  was  shot  in.  For  example,  events  shot  in  the  alluvium  in  southern 
Area  3  have  a  K-factor,  which  is  a  relative  measure  of  cavity  size, 
around  the  low  eighties.  Shots  in  Pahute  Mesa,  in  the  very  hard 
lavas,  tend  to  have  K-values  of  64  or  so.  And  so,  we  see  a  range 
of  cavity  sizes  reflecting  the  geologic  circumstances  of  the  shots. 

Carothers:  Do  you  think  it  is  the  strength  of  the  material  in 
which  the  device  is  fired  that  is  responsible  for  the  variation  in  scaled 
cavity  sizes? 

Kunkle:  The  strength  of  the  material  certainly  has  an  effect. 
If  you  look  at  average  numbers,  as  you  move  from  the  soft,  fluffy, 
low  density  alluviums  in  southern  Area  3,  with,  say,  a  density  of 
1 .65,  to  the  medium  density  alluviums  in  the  center  of  the  valley, 
which  have  densities  of  1 .8  or  so,  to  the  higher  density  alluviums  in 
the  north  part  of  the  valley  which  have  densities  near  1 .9  to  2.0, 
and  down  into  the  tuff  units,  which  are  perceptibly  stronger  rock, 
to  the  very  dense,  strong  lava  units  on  Pahute  Mesa,  you  see  a 
progression  of  cavity  sizes  from  larger  to  smaller  as  the  units  increase 
in  their  presumed  strength. 

I  say  presumed  because  we  don't  really  measure  strength,  but 
one  could  imagine  that  those  materials  are  getting  stronger.  The 
alluviums  are  too  weak  to  core.  They  crumble  apart.  The  stuff  that 
we  took  out  of  some  of  the  lavas  up  on  Pahute  near  the  Houston  shot 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


235 


are  good  tombstone  material.  I  describe  them  as  very  competent, 
very  strong,  uniform  rock.  As  you  move  through  this  progression 
of  rocks  the  cavities  tend  to  get  smaller. 

Carothers:  The  data  are  scattered,  but  there  is  a  definite 
trend? 

Kunkle:  Yes.  Much  of  the  scatter  is  due  to  measurement 
errors.  Where  actually  is  the  cavity,  for  example.  In  the  radio¬ 
chemical  drill-backs  you  have  to  know  where  in  space,  or  where  in 
the  ground,  you  actually  intercepted  the  radiation  that  marks  the 
edge  of  the  cavity  in  order  to  back  out  the  so-called  cavity  radius. 
The  first  problem  you  run  into  is  that  this  usually  isn't  a  smooth 
transition  from  the  native  rock  into  the  radioactive  melt  glass.  The 
transition  is  usually  a  meter  or  two  wide,  with  fractures  and  little 
pockets  of  activity  mixed  in.  Turbulent  mixing  comes  to  mind, 
though  of  course  we've  never  seen  that  transition  layer  in  that 
detail. 

It's  not  a  smooth,  sharp  boundary,  so  one  of  the  uncertainties 
is  where  to  pick  the  edge  of  the  cavity  to  be.  That's  something  which 
often  has  a  meter,  or  two  meters,  of  uncertainty.  Then  there  is  an 
uncertainty  as  you  lower  a  gyro  tool  into  the  ground  to  try  to  survey 
in  where  that  spot  really  is.  Those  errors  build  up,  and  you're  left 
with  a  sizable  error,  which  increases  linearly  with  the  depth  of  the 
shot,  as  to  where  you  actually  find  that  interface,  just  from  the 
surveying.  Much  of  the  spread  we  see  in  cavity  radii,  the  K-values, 
the  scaled  cavity  radii,  can  be  traced  directly  to  our  cavity  radius 
measurement  errors. 

If  we  look  at  the  shots  in  Area  3  tuffs,  which  are  fairly  deeply 
buried,  the  average  K-vaiue  for  those  is  around  74,  76,  plus  or 
minus  8.  About  two-thirds  to  a  half  of  that  error,  somewhere  in  that 
neighborhood,  comes  from  cavity  radius  measurement  errors.  And 
so,  when  you  get  a  discrepancy  for  a  shot,  you  don't  know  if  you 
really  had  a  cavity  that  may  have  been  large  in  that  direction,  or  if 
you  just  happened  to  get  unlucky  with  the  surveying. 

For  devices  detonated  in  tunnels  it  is  possible  to  reenter,  and  if 
there  is  sufficient  interest,  mine  back  to  the  boundary  of  the  former 
cavity  and  even  beyond,  into  the  region  where  overlying  material 
has  fallen  in  and  filled  the  former  void.  Then  there  can  be  accurate 


236  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

surveys,  visual  observations,  and  photographic  documentation.  Even 
so,  in  the  few  cases  where  this  has  been  done,  determining  a  cavity 
boundary,  or  volume,  has  been  uncertain. 

Patch:  A  problem  we've  always  had,  at  least  for  DNA,  has  been 
really  tagging  the  cavity  in  such  a  way  that  you  have  confidence  that 
you  know  exactly  what  the  cavity  boundary  is.  In  the  tunnels  we 
tend  to  have  fairly  big  perturbations  because  of  stemming  columns, 
and  things  of  that  ilk.  So,  unfortunately,  the  cavity  size  is  not  known 
very  well.  It's  probably  better  to  talk  about  the  volume,  and  then 
small  differences  are  being  cubed.  In  my  mind  that's  a  better  way 
to  look  at  it. 

An  issue  which  I  think  is  important  is  the  different  ways  that 
cavities  collapse.  Some  of  them  collapse  in  a  rotational  mode. 
That's  a  shear  collapse,  if  you  will,  where  apparently  there's  a  shear 
plane  that  forms  behind  the  molten  edge.  It's  a  slope  failure,  a 
rotational  slope  failure.  I  don't  know  how  far  back  this  shear  plane 
is,  but  our  experience  is  that  the  cavity  radii  tend  to  be  about  ten 
percent  greater  in  the  horizontal  plane  than  what  you  determine  by 
measuring  down  vertically.  Of  course,  stuff  comes  down  from  the 
top  also,  and  so  the  exact  size  of  the  cavity  is  a  little  bit  iffy. 

Another  thing  is  that,  at  least  to  first  order,  all  of  the  DNA  sites 
we've  fired  in  are  wet  tuff,  and  they  all  are  close  to  the  same 
strength.  So,  we  haven't  really  been  able  to  say,  in  terms  of  cavity 
growth,  or  cavity  size,  how  rock  strength  affects  these  things.  I  think 
that's  an  important  parameter  for  us  when  we  look  at  the  closures 
for  the  DNA  experiments. 

Maybe  I  can  take  a  slightly  different  tangent,  that  speaks  in  that 
general  direction  from  a  somewhat  different  experience  base. 
We've  done  a  lot  of  work  with  Carl  Smith  and  the  Sandia  folks 
regarding  the  HE  shots  in  G  tunnel.  Those  shots  have  ranged  from 
eight  pounds  up  to  a  ton.  The  second  area  which  we  worked  in  fairly 
intensively  was  with  Alex  Morris  at  SRI,  with  fairly  small  shots.  I 
think  the  data,  when  you  look  at  it,  for  that  range  of  yields  is  pretty 
unequivocal  that  strength  has  a  very  important  effect  on  the  cavity 
size. 

And  it's  strength  in  a  funny  way.  That  is,  we  have  found,  with 
reasonably  high  confidence,  that  the  response  of  these  earth  mate¬ 
rials,  be  they  grouts,  or  be  they  tuffs,  are  rate  dependent.  In 
particular,  they  have  an  effectively  higher  strength  if  there  are  very 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


237 


high  strain  rates.  That  shows  up  in  this  data  base  which  spans  quite 
a  large  range  in  strain  rates,  from  3/8ths  of  a  gram  charge  of  HE  up 
to  really  nuclear  size.  Over  that  range  we  have  seen  dramatic 
differences  in  the  scaled  sizes  of  cavities. 

I  think  those  are  reasonably  well  controlled  observations, 
because  we  know,  reasonably  accurately,  what  the  equation  of  state 
for  high  explosive  is,  from  its  initiation  all  the  way  out.  And  we 
have,  for  the  SRI  case,  control  of  the  grout  material.  There  is  not 
as  much  control  for  the  material  in  Carl  Smith's  work,  except  to  the 
extent  that  it's  a  homogeneous  body  of  tuff  that's  relevant  to  the 
DNA  nuclear  sites  because  the  properties  are  close  to  those  of  the 
rocks  they  shoot  in. 

I  tend  to  think  of  the  microphotographs  of  samples  that  show 
this  incredible  structure,  and  I  tend  to  think  of  the  movement  of  the 
rock  as  being  a  very  complicated  process  of  grains  trying  to  break 
cementation,  and  trying  to  slide  over  each  other,  and  doing  all  kinds 
of  strange  things.  So,  I  think  of  the  strength  of  the  rock  from  a  more 
mechanical  point  of  view.  Being  a  mechanical  engineer,  I  guess  I 
think  more  that  way. 

The  role,  or  influence,  of  the  water  in  the  rocks  on  the  growth 
and  size  of  the  cavities  is  another  factor  that  is  not  that  well 
understood.  Certainly  it  has  an  effect.  There  is  general  agreement 
that  it  weakens  the  strength  of  the  rock,  in  some  indeterminate  way, 
but  how  much  it  affects  the  growth  of  the  cavity  is  an  open  question. 

Carothers:  John,  in  calculating  cavity  sizes,  do  you  think  that 
the  principal  influence  is  the  strength  of  the  rock  itself?  How 
important  is  the  amount  of  water  in  the  rock? 

Rambo:  Perhaps  we're  limited  in  our  calculations  in  terms  of 
driving  pressures  from  the  steam,  but  I  see  only  a  minor  difference 
in  the  amount  of  cavity  pressure  that's  generated  with  say,  ten 
percent  water  as  opposed  to  twenty-four  percent  water.  The 
strength  of  the  material  makes  a  big  difference.  I  am  much  happier 
with  a  large  cavity,  because  then  I  make  the  assumption  that  it  was 
fired  in  fairly  weak  rock,  and  the  shockwave  is  attenuated.  And 
from  all  these  biases  that  come  from  my  calculational  background, 
I  see  a  large  cavity  as  more  benign  than  I  do  something  with  a  small 
cavity. 


238  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Kunkle:  I've  looked  at  models  of  cavity  growth,  and  if  the 
amount  of  water  in  the  rock  had  an  appreciable  effect  on  the  cavity 
size  you  should  be  able  to  evaluate  the  volume  percent  saturation, 
and  as  the  amount  of  water  and  the  volume  of  water  in  a  given 
volume  of  rock  increases  you  should  see  larger  cavities.  I  have  not 
seen  that  there  is  any  significant  dependence  of  the  K-vaiues,  the 
scaled  cavity  sizes,  on  that  parameter. 

Carothers:  When  the  cavity  reaches  it's  full  growth,  the  belief 
is  that  the  cavity  pressure  is  determined  by  the  strength  of  the  rock 
and  the  overburden  pressure. 

Rambo:  Yes.  I  think  you  do  have  to  add  the  residual  stress  to 
the  overburden  pressure.  But  the  cavity  pressure  is  at  least 
overburden  pressure.  As  far  as  the  water  goes,  after  full  growth  I 
don't  see  a  big  difference  in  the  cavity  pressure,  even  though  I've 
put  more  water  in  the  calculation.  I  do  see  some  differences  in  the 
calculations,  but  not  large  ones.  There  is  a  slight  dependence,  in 
some  kinds  of  soils,  where  if  there  is  a  lot  of  water,  the  water  tends 
to  lubricate  it  and  make  the  material  weaker.  Water  can  make  a 
difference  there.  That's  one  effect  that  can  certainly  take  place. 
There  is  a  tendency,  in  a  soil-like  material,  to  see  that,  but  it's  not 
strongly  connected  to  the  cavity  pressure  itself. 

But  I  will  put  in  a  caveat  -  -  not  every  rock  does  that.  There 
was  some  work  done  by  Bob  Terhune,  in  which  he  went  back  into 
the  calculations,  and  he  said,  "Look,  we  see  the  strength  phenom¬ 
enon  difference  in  the  cavity  radius,  and  we  see  it  as  to  when  the 
residual  stress  sets  up."  He  decided  that  it  sort  of  made  sense.  So, 
he  looked  at  different  areas.  He  looked  at  Area  20,  and  by  and  large 
it  looked  like  things  set  up  differently  there,  in  the  sense  that  the 
cavity  radii  tend  to  be  smaller  than  in  the  valley.  In  a  very  hard 
rhyolite,  like  the  rock  the  Molbo  event  was  fired  in,  where  the 
drilling  rates  were  low,  there  was  a  small  cavity  radius.  Then  you 
get  into  something  like  Baneberry,  where  they  measured  a  very  weak 
rock,  and  there  was  a  fairly  good  size  cavity  radius.  The  calculations 
show  the  same  thing.  So,  I  see  tendencies  in  that  direction. 

There  are  still  some  outliers  that  I  can't  explain,  and  that  I 
don't  understand.  From  time  to  time  you  get  something  that's 
enormously  large,  or  enormously  small,  in  the  relative  size  of  things. 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


239 


I've  seen  that  kind  of  thing.  Given  that,  I  think  there  is  a  trend 
through  all  of  this  that  does  follow  the  strength  idea.  But  the  data 
are  noisy,  very  noisy. 

Carothers:  Nort,  more  containment  lore.  The  cavity  sizes  at 
the  Test  Site  are  all  about  the  same,  scaled  of  course,  since  all  the 
rocks  at  the  Test  Site  have  1  5%  to  20%  water,  plus  or  minus  a  bit. 
Would  you  agree  with  that? 

Rimer:  I  don't  believe  that  for  a  minute.  I  know  a  lot  of  people 
believe  that,  but  I  don't  believe  that  for  a  minute.  Most  of  the  cavity 
measurements  are  from  drillbacks  into  the  lower  half  of  the  cavity. 
They  always  take  the  radius  measurement  from  some  drillback  point 
to  the  old  shot  point.  They  don't  account  for  cavity  buoyancy,  and 
even  elastic  calculations  will  show  the  cavity  moving  up.  An 
inelastic  calculation  will  show  that  the  cavity  may  move  up  two, 
three,  four  feet;  maybe  even  several  meters  for  a  big  shot,  depend¬ 
ing  on  how  weak  the  rock  is,  just  because  of  the  presence  of  the  free 
surface.  And  for  the  bigger  shots  there's  stronger  material  below, 
so  the  upper  hemisphere  of  the  cavity  is  going  to  be  quite  a  bit  larger 
than  the  smallest  dimensions.  Calculations  have  shown  that.  Of 
course,  nobody  knows,  because  the  cavities  ail  collapse. 

Carothers:  There  was  one  that  didn't.  That  was  Salmon.  The 
cavity  was  reentered,  in  the  sense  that  they  sent  down  TV  cameras, 
and  there  was  a  nice  spherical  cavity. 

Rimer:  You're  right,  but  that  was  not  at  the  Test  Site.  It  was 
at  seven  hundred  eighty  meters,  in  salt,  but  not  salt  all  the  way  to 
the  free  surface.  And,  they  reentered  nine  months  later.  I  spent 
a  lot  of  time  calculating  Salmon,  and  Gnome.  It's  clear  to  me  that 
in  the  nine  months  until  they  reentered  Salmon  that  cavity  wall 
creeped  in  about  five  meters  in  radius.  I  matched  ail  the  particle 
velocity  records  from  that  event,  and  the  calculations  that  matched 
them  require  about  a  2!  meter  radius  cavity.  They  measured  16 
or  1  7  meters.  I  do  believe  that  Salmon  creeped  in  quite  a  bit.  Now, 
it  was  buried  very  deep;  if  it's  less  deep,  there  will  be  less  creep. 
Evidence  from  salt  mines  is  that  the  open  drifts  want  to  creep  back 
at  you. 

Carothers:  Another  cavity  that  was  reentered  was  Gnome,  also 
in  salt.  It  was  not  as  uniform  a  medium,  and  not  as  uniform  a  cavity 
either. 


240 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Rimer:  The  models  that  work  for  Salmon  work  for  Gnome. 
That  was  a  layered  salt,  and  that  may  explain  the  shape. 

Higgins:  After  Rainier,  and  after  we  had  done  other  under¬ 
ground  shots  we  found  that  we  always  got  cavities  with  a  radius  of 
fifty  or  so  W  to  the  1  /3rd  feet.  We  thought,  "Ah  ha,  all  rocks  are 
behaving  in  the  same  way.  It  doesn't  make  any  difference  what's  in 
them." 

And  then  came  some  information,  first  by  very  circuitous 
routes,  and  then  directly,  that  the  French  shots  in  granite  in  North 
Africa  didn't  make  cavities  with  a  radius  of  fifty  W  to  the  1  /3rd  feet. 
They  only  made  three  or  four  meter  cavities,  which  means  a  ten  or 
twelve  foot  radius  cavity  for  a  kiloton.  Well,  that  couldn't  be,  so 
that  informations  must  be  wrong.  That  was  the  first  reaction. 

Then  we  had  a  symposium  at  Davis  in  1964;  I  think  it  was 
called  the  Second  Plowshare  Symposium.  The  French  sent  a  very 
large  delegation  of  physicists  who  were  quite  willing  to  talk  about 
some  of  the  physical  effects,  as  long  as  they  thought  it  was  a  one- 
on-one  quid  pro  quo.  They  would  tell  us  the  cavity  radius  from 
some  shot,  and  then  they  would  expect  us  to  reciprocate.  Well,  the 
circumstances  were  such  we  couldn't  do  that,  so  they  stopped.  But 
we  did  get  some  information  before  that,  and  one  of  the  things  that 
was  confirmed  was  that  their  cavities  were  grossly  different  from 
what  we  had  seen  on  the  Hard  Hat  shot,  which  we  had  fired  in 
granite. 

Carothers:  How  can  that  be?  You  had  determined  that  the 
rock  doesn't  really  make  any  difference. 

Higgins:  That's  what  we  thought.  That  was  the  first  clue,  and 
we  were  not  bright  enough  to  tumble  to  it  soon  enough.  It  should 
have  told  us  that  the  conclusion  we  had  come  to  about  the  rock 
didn't  make  any  difference  was  true  because  all  of  the  rocks  we  were 
looking  at  were  mostly  water.  Even  Gnome,  which  was  shot  in  salt 
in  '61,  was  four  percent  water  by  weight,  so  when  you  put  the 
sodium  chloride  and  the  other  things  into  it,  that  gives  a  material 
which  is  like  twenty  mole  percent  water.  So,  even  the  driest  thing 
we  ever  done  a  shot  in  was  about  one  quarter  water. 

What  was  going  on  was  that  the  French  were  firing  in  the 
Hoggar  massif,  which  is  a  block  of  granite  that's  like  tombstone 
granite.  It  doesn't  have  many  cracks,  it  doesn't  have  any  pores,  so 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


241 


there's  almost  no  water  there.  It  was  less  than  a  half  of  a  percent, 
and  it  probably  was  less  than  a  tenth  of  a  percent.  So,  in  their  case 
they  really  did  have  a  shot  in  material  with  no  water  -  -  a  dry  granite. 

The  United  States,  and  this  is  an  important  point,  because  it 
affects  the  arms  control  talks,  the  disarmament  talks,  the  treaty 
negotiations,  has  never  fired  an  event  in  any  material  that  isn't 
dominated  by  water.  The  seismic  signal,  all  this  business  about  the 
geologic  differences  between  the  Nevada  Test  Site  and  the  Soviet 
Siberian  platform,  or  Novya  Zemlya,  are  trivial  compared  to  the  fact 
that  they  all  have  water.  Whether  it's  granite  or  tuff  isn't  important; 
what  is  different  is  the  transmission  path.  The  French  really  did 
several  shots  in  something  that  wasn't  wet,  and  only  they  have  ever 
done  that. 

Carothers:  John,  have  you  done  work  on  the  Hoggar  shots? 
They  are  one  body  of  experience  of  shooting  in  a  very  dry,  very 
strong  rock,  and  the  cavities  there  were  small  compared  to  the  ones 
we  normally  see. 

Rambo:  I've  done  a  little  work  on  that.  My  understanding  is 
that  the  Hoggar  granite  is  a  rock  that  is  like  one  unit  that  has  not 
been  fractured.  Or  if  it  is,  the  fractures  are  much  farther  apart  than 
they  are  in  the  granites  we  have.  When  we  looked  at  our  granites, 
the  fractures  were  on  the  order  of  a  foot  or  so  apart. 

In  our  local  NTS  geology,  if  you  take  a  piece  of  granite  and 
measure  it  in  the  laboratory,  if  it's  not  fractured,  you  get  a  pretty 
hard  rock.  And  yet,  this  material,  in  bulk,  is  a  weak  rock,  because 
of  the  fractures.  And,  it's  certainly  not  going  to  be  helped  any  by 
the  shockwave  that  goes  through  it.  The  two  sites  -  -  the  NTS 
granite,  and  the  Hoggar  granite  -  -  give  completely  different  answers 
in  terms  of  the  cavity  radii.  If  you  shoot  in  something  that's  less 
fractured,  then  you  really  are  starting  with  a  stronger  rock,  and  you 
get  a  small  cavity  radius.  Compared  to  the  laboratory  data  you  have 
to  degrade  the  strength  of  the  rock  by  almost  a  factor  of  ten, 
because  of  the  rock  fracture  frequency.  There  has  been  some  work 
done  in  trying  to  get  the  strength  from  the  fracture  frequency.  I  did 
calculations  on  one  of  the  French  shots,  and  I  came  up  reasonably 
close  to  the  measured  cavity  radius. 


242 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Nort,  there's  a  set  of  granite  data,  aside  from  Pile 
Driver,  which  you  are  probably  familiar  with,  and  that's  the  French 
tests. 

Rimer:  Hoggar.  Yes. 

Carothers:  The  difference  from  Pile  Driver,  as  1  understand  it, 
is  that  the  Hoggar  granite  is  very  dry,  and  has  a  very  low  number  of 
fractures  in  it. 

Rimer:  One  every  three  to  five  feet,  compared  to  one  every 
foot  or  so  in  Pile  Driver. 

Carothers:  The  other  thing  about  those  shots  is,  presumably, 
that  the  cavity  sizes  were  quite  small  for  the  yields  of  the  devices. 

Rimer:  I  know.  I  spent  a  lot  of  time  on  that.  Actually,  those 
cavities  weren't  that  much  smaller.  If  you  assume  that  rock  is 
completely  dry,  you  get  a  cavity  radius  which  is  roughly  two-thirds 
the  cavity  radius  of  Pile  Driver. 

Carothers:  But  that  means  their  volumes  were  less  than  one- 
third  of  the  cavities  generally  seen  at  the  Test  Site. 

Rimer:  That's  true,  and  there  were  a  couple  that  were  smaller. 
There  are  a  lot  of  stories  about  the  in-situ  stresses  in  that  mountain, 
but  I  can't  confirm  them.  They're  not  confirmable. 

There  is  some  sort  of  phase  reversal  that  came  out  of  Hoggar, 
in  seismic  motion.  It  can  be  explained  by  putting  in  in-situ  shear 
stresses  -  -  in  other  words,  the  vertical  stress  different  from  the 
horizontal  stresses,  in  that  rock.  Steve  Day,  who  was  S-Cubed  for 
many  years,  and  I  did  a  lot  of  work,  and  a  number  of  calculations, 
on  that,  trying  to  explain  that.  We  got  some  good  answers,  but  I'm 
not  totally  convinced,  because  if  you  accept  the  answers  on  the 
cavity  size  as  being  because  the  material  is  dry,  then  the  pulse  widths 
would  be  very  much  smaller.  Therefore  the  displacements  would  be 
much  smaller.  The  displacements  that  the  French  have  published 
are  fairly  consistent  with  the  SRI  data.  They're  further  out,  and 
they're  a  little  smaller  than  Perret's  two  measurements  here,  but 
they're  not  as  small  as  you  would  get  from  assuming  a  very  dry,  very 
strong  material.  Also,  the  seismic  ground  motions  aren't  that  much 
smaller,  if  we  believe  the  yields  they  have  given  us.  So,  I'm  not 
convinced  of  the  answer. 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow  243 

Carothers:  Let  me  greatly  oversimplify  this.  There  are  the 
people  who  say,  "That  rock  was  very  strong,  and  it  is  the  strength 
of  the  rock  that  really  determines  how  large  the  cavity  can  grow." 
Then  there  are  the  people  who  say,  "That  rock  was  very  dry,  and 
therefore  there  was  no  steam,  no  gas  pressure  to  push  the  cavity 
out." 

Rimer:  I  don't  like  the  cavity  pressure  argument,  because  even 
if  you  accept  that  Pile  Driver  was  fairly  wet  -  -  at  most  there  was  a 
couple  of  percent  of  water  in  there  -  -  the  water  would  be  ail  in  the 
pores.  I'll  buy  the  dry  part  as  increasing  the  effective  strength;  I 
won't  buy  it  on  the  cavity  pressure.  There  was  just  not  enough  water 
in  Pile  Driver.  Hoggar  core  samples  were  sent  to  Livermore  at  some 
time,  and  the  actual  intact  strength  of  that  granite  is  very  compa¬ 
rable  to  Pile  Driver  granite. 


Cavity  Shape 

Presumably  the  shock  wave  that  is  generated  by  the  detonation 
starts  out  as  a  spherical  wave,  imparting  the  same  amount  of  energy 
per  kilogram  to  all  of  the  rock  around  the  device.  If  the  world  were 
homogeneous  the  rock  should  move  out  uniformly  and  radially, 
leaving  a  spherical  cavity.  How  good  is  that  simple  picture?  Not 
very,  it  turns  out. 

Carothers:  DNA  has  done  some  tunnel  reentries  of  one  kind 
and  another.  What  can  you  say  about  the  cavities  themselves? 

Ristvet:  Well,  we  definitely  know  they're  not  spherical.  We 
find  that  they  seem  to  be  fairly  symmetrical  in  the  equatorial  radius 
when  they're  in  virgin  tuff,  but  they  do  snout  down  the  grout  filled 
drifts.  The  cavities  do  grow  preferentially  in  the  directions  of  the 
LOS  drift  and  the  bypass  drift,  which  usually  are  where  we  have  been 
tagging  the  radius.  Whether  that's  a  function  of  the  mismatch 
between  the  strength  in  the  grout  and  the  strength  on  the  tuff,  or 
the  high  water  content  of  the  grouts  so  they  sort  of  popcorn  back 
in,  we  don't  know.  Those  are  the  two  leading  candidates  for  an 
explanation. 


244 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


We  have  two  events  where  we  probed  the  bottom  of  the  cavity 
in  the  conventional  manner.  I  think  the  one  we  did  on  Hunters 
Trophy  confirms  very  definitely  that  the  downward  growth  is  less 
than  the  equatorial  growth.  Out  the  back  in  the  equatorial  plane  the 
radius  is  closer  to  what  the  radius  is  below. 

You  would  think,  based  on  block  motion  phenomenology,  that 
the  in-situ  stress  field  would  have  some  sort  of  effect  on  cavity 
growth  and  create  asymmetries.  We  don't  see  it  in  the  data,  or  it's 
in  the  noise.  I  think  our  measurements  have  shown  that  gravity 
certainly  has  an  influence  on  the  cavity  growth,  and  the  calculations 
say  it  should.  Where  the  surface  of  the  ground  is  does,  definitely. 
We  like  to  use  the  equatorial  cavity  radius  because  that's  the  one  of 
concern  to  us,  and  we  can  actually  walk  up  and  physically  put  our 
hands  on  it.  Well,  we  used  to  be  able  to  do  that  until  the  ESezH  of 
today.  The  "Low  As  Reasonably  Achievable"  requirement  makes 
it  very  difficult  to  do  a  reentry  these  days. 

I'm  glad  we  did  the  reentries  we  did  when  we  did  them.  I  think, 
without  a  doubt,  that  the  reentries  on  Misty  Rain,  and  then  the 
subsequent  reentries  on  the  shots  that  worked  well  -  -  Middle  Note, 
Mission  Cyber,  Disko  Elm,  and  Misty  Echo  -  -  told  us  more  about 
how  well  we  were  doing  at  predicting  the  phenomenology  that  we 
were  trying  to  predict  for  containment  than  anything  else.  The  Red 
Hot  reentry  was  invaluable;  without  it  I'm  not  sure  we  would  have 
ever  done  Misty  Echo. 

Patch:  The  field  folks  have  done  a  lot  of  work  to  try  to  look 
at  the  shape  of  the  cavity  in  the  vicinity  of  the  stemming  column, 
because  that's  where  we  potentially  get  unusual  cavity  shapes, 
because  it's  not  a  homogeneous  medium.  We're  trying  to  put 
something  in  the  tunnel  there  that  fools  the  cavity  into  thinking  it's 
still  rock.  How  successful  we've  been  at  that  is  something  we're  very 
interested  in. 

Carothers:  Mr.  Patch,  DNA  has  never  fired  in  a  homogeneous 
medium,  and  you  know  that. 

Patch:  Weil,  yes,  that's  true.  But  when  we  take  the  tuff  out 
of  the  mountain  and  put  something  else  in,  it's  even  less  homoge¬ 
neous  than  it  was.  I  would  say  that  a  lot  of  our  interest  in  cavity 
shapes  has  been  with  respect  to  how  they've  interacted  with  the 
stemming.  I  think  that,  by  and  large,  we've  found  that  we  tend  to 
get  preferential  cavity  growth  in  the  direction  of  the  stemming 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


245 


column.  We  do  perturb  things,  and  we'd  like  to  understand  why 
that  is,  and  we'd  like  to  know  how  to  perturb  them  less  than  we 
evidently  do. 

Carothers:  John,  presumably  the  cavity  grows  in  a  more  or  less 
spherical  fashion.  Or,  at  least  it  does  in  the  calculations.  Do  you 
think  the  cavities  are  spherical? 

Rambo:  There  was  a  shot  called  Clymer,  which  had  a  large 
opening  above  the  device.  We  had  three  satellite  holes  with  slifers 
in  them,  and  I  could  track  across  those  satellite  holes  and  see  how 
far  that  perturbation  went  off  to  the  side.  It  was  the  first  time  we 
had  ever  actually  looked  at  the  shape  of  the  shockwave  changing 
with  distance.  That  became  a  basis  for  understanding,  or  question¬ 
ing,  this  idea  about  a  spherical  shockwave.  It  was  an  actual 
measurement  to  base  that  question  on.  It  was  the  only  time  that  had 
ever  been  done;  actually  showing  the  shape  of  the  shockwave. 

Carothers:  Did  those  measurements  show  that  the  cavity,  as  it 
was  growing,  was  not  spherical? 

Rambo:  Yes,  but  that  means  that  the  energy,  if  it  had  gone  up 
a  line-of-sight  pipe  for  a  certain  distance,  was  actually  forming  its 
own  cavity  at  that  point.  Now,  I've  been  biased  by  calculations  I've 
done  in  past  years  where  we've  shown  that  things  starting  in  that 
kind  of  configuration  tend  to  get  relatively  spherical  with  time.  But 
in  the  early  stages,  those  cavities  are  not  spherical. 

Carothers:  In  the  case  you're  describing  I  would  think  of  it  as 
looking  more  like  a  teardrop. 

Rambo:  A  teardrop,  or  a  bottle  shape.  Usually  these  shapes 
are  fairly  weak  in  terms  of  what  stress  waves  start  out  from  some 
opening  away  from  the  device,  and  the  main  body  of  the  stress  down 
below  tends  to  overwhelm  them  at  later  times. 

Carothers:  Bob  Brownlee  used  to  be  in  the  business  of  what 
LASL  called  hydro-yield.  On  Bilby,  which  was  a  shot  of  about  250 
kilotons  in  Yucca  Flat,  he  had  three  instrument  holes.  The  working 
point  was  fairly  close  to  the  Paleozoics.  He  has  said  that  he  could 
see  from  the  signals  in  those  three  holes  that  the  cavity  was  not 
spherical;  it  had  to  have  been  teardrop  shaped  to  match  his  data. 


246 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


The  shot  point  was  close  to  the  Paleozoics,  so  it  didn't  grow  down 
much,  and  it  tended  to  grow  up  more.  That  kind  of  a  model  gave 
a  reasonable  fit  to  his  data,  but  a  spherical  cavity  didn't. 

Rambo:  I  would  probably  interpret  it  differently.  You  do 
occasionally  run  into  weaker  rock,  in  the  tuffs,  that  tends  to  move 
a  little  bit  faster,  but  not  for  terribly  long.  I  would  say  it  had  to  do 
with  the  material  properties,  particularly  strength,  which  can  make 
a  big  difference  to  the  growth  of  the  cavity.  If  there  is  strong  rock 
below,  and  weaker  rocks  above,  it  can  grow  more  in  the  upward 
direction. 

I  believe  the  material  properties  could  make  a  big  difference, 
but  I  don't  hold  to  the  idea  that  the  cavity  is  going  to,  by  its 
pressure,  cause  this  change  in  how  the  growth  is  going  to  occur. 
Some  people  think  the  cavity  is  being  driven  by  cavity  pressure  at 
late  times,  and  I  don't  subscribe  to  that.  I  think  it's  really  the 
strength  and  material  properties  of  the  rocks  that  can  cause  a  funny 
shaped  cavity.  Those  same  properties  can  also  affect  the  arrival 
times  of  the  shock.  Some  properties  may  cause  early  arrivals  in  the 
shockwaves,  but  yet  may  retard  cavity  growth.  But  I  certainly  can 
believe  a  teardrop  sort  of  cavity  for  a  shot  near  the  Paleozoics. 

Cavity  Pressure 

Something  which  affects  leakage  through  the  stemming  and 
the  cables,  and  the  possibility  of  hydrofracturing  through  the  native 
material  is  the  the  cavity  pressure,  and  its  variation  with  time.  One 
body  of  work,  where  pressures  were  measured  on  high  explosive 
experiments  in  the  tuffs  of  G  tunnel  was  done  by  Carl  Smith.  For 
nuclear  events,  Billy  Hudson  developed  a  method  of  measuring  the 
pressure  in  the  fully  formed  cavity. 

Smith:  An  important  thing  we  could  do  on  the  high  explosive 
experiments,  which  is  much  more  difficult  and  expensive  to  do  on 
a  nuclear  experiment,  was  to  mine  back  to  find  out  what  went  wrong 
with  some  measurement.  We  dug  back  in,  recovered  all  the  gauges, 
saw  how  good  our  grout  jobs  were,  and  we  learned  from  all  those 
things.  For  instance,  there  was  a  shot  where  we  were  trying  to 
measure  the  cavity  pressure.  The  pressure  came  down,  and  settled 
at  about  seven  thousand  psi.  We  thought  that  was  a  wonderful 
measurement,  but  when  we  mined  back  in  we  found  that  the  pipe 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


247 


was  plugged.  So,  we  knew  the  cavity  came  down  to  seven  thousand 
psi,  and  leaked  down  from  there,  but  the  ground  shock  had  jammed 
the  pipe  closed,  and  so  we  didn't  see  that. 

That  was  confirmed  on  subsequent  shots  of  that  size  where  we 
measured  significantly  lower  cavity  pressures.  A  tamped  eight 
pound  shot  will  generate  about  eight  thousand  psi  of  pressure.  As 
you  go  to  larger  and  larger  sizes  of  HE  the  pressures  drop  signifi¬ 
cantly.  A  sixty-four  pound  shot  will  develop  about  forty-six 
hundred  psi.  Thousand  pound  shots  only  developed  about  twenty- 
five  hundred  psi.  We  believe  that's  a  rate  effect  in  how  the  material 
responds,  and  how  rapidly  it  responds. 

Carothers:  And  when  you  go  to  kilotons? 

Smith:  You  generate  just  over  in-situ  pressure. 

Carothers:  Billy,  you  have  measured  pressures  in  some  of  the 
nuclear  cavities,  have  you  not? 

Hudson:  1  would  claim  that  our  experiments  were  the  first  to 
measure  cavity  pressure  on  nuclear  shots  through  any  significant 
fraction  of  the  entire  history.  In  the  fairly  distant  past  people  tried 
to  measure  cavity  pressure  in  conjunction  with  some  other  measure¬ 
ment,  or  some  other  experiment.  As  a  result  it  was  sort  of  a  catch- 
as-catch-can  measurement.  In  particular,  they  tried  to  measure  gas 
in  tubes  that  were  designed  to  withdraw  samples  from  the  cavity. 
Usually  those  measurments  involved  flow  from  the  cavity  into  the 
tube  they  were  trying  to  make  the  measurement  in.  Usually  that 
tube  plugged.  In  fact,  almost  all  you  had  to  do  was  call  the  system 
a  gas  sampling  system  to  be  sure  nothing  came  out. 

There's  more  than  one  problem  with  that  approach.  You  have 
a  real  problem  if  the  tube  plugs.  Even  if  it  doesn't,  if  you  try  to 
measure  the  gas  pressure  at  the  end  of  a  long  tube  you  have  a 
problem  because  you're  never  in  thermodynamic  equilibrium.  If 
you  have  a  hot  gas,  maybe  with  water  vapor  in  it,  flowing  in  one  end 
of  a  long  tube,  it  condenses  and  cools,  and  by  the  time  it  gets  to  the 
other  end  the  pressure  is  quite  different  from  what  it  was  at  the 
opening. 

We  reasoned  that  the  best  way  to  make  a  pressure  measure¬ 
ment  would  be  to  always  have  a  very  small  amount  of  flow  toward 
the  cavity.  If  you  measure  the  pressure  at  the  source  of  flow,  near 
your  instrumentation  package,  and  the  flow  is  quite  small,  you  could 


248 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


argue  that  the  flow  at  the  instrumentation  package  is  essentially  the 
same  as  the  flow  at  the  end  by  the  cavity,  and  the  pressures  are 
essentially  the  same.  The  tube  shouldn't  plug  if  the  flow  is  always 
toward  the  cavity,  and  maybe  you  could  get  a  pressure  measurement 
that  way. 

And  so,  that's  what  we  did.  We  filled  the  tube  with  fluid  so  we 
wouldn't  have  the  thermodynamic  equilibrium  problem  you  have 
with  a  gas.  In  the  first  experiments  we  actually  blew  the  fluid  out 
of  the  tube,  with  high  pressure,  so  we  knew  we  had  established  a  flow 
and  we  would  hopefully  stop  the  cavity  growth  process  from 
plugging  the  tube.  That  worked  very  well,  in  that  we  got  some  data 
that  at  least  looked  as  we  expected  it  to  look.  We  might  not  have 
been  in  direct  communication  with  the  cavity,  but  we  were  probably 
fairly  close. 

We  tried  the  same  experiment  several  times  after  that.  I  think 
we've  done  it  successfully  five  or  six  times  now.  We've  varied  things 
a  fair  amount.  For  example,  we've  stopped  blowing  the  fluid  out 
with  high  pressure  gas.  That  doesn't  seem  to  be  necessary,  and  it 
slows  the  response  time.  Not  doing  that  also  makes  the  experiment 
a  lot  less  expensive.  It  costs  a  lot  of  money  to  have  high  pressure 
gas  systems  around,  because  they  can  explode  and  hurt  people.  If 
it's  a  high  pressure  liquid  system,  there's  not  much  energy  involved, 
and  it's  not  nearly  as  much  of  a  safety  problem. 

The  first  time  we  tried  was  on  a  DNA  shot,  and  for  a  reason  we 
don't  understand,  it  didn't  work.  Probably  it  was  fault  motion 
severing  the  lines,  or  something.  The  first  successful  one  was  on  a 
Livermore  shot,  and  after  that  the  DNA  people  were  very  anxious 
to  have  us  try  it  on  another  of  their  shots.  Fortunately,  that  one 
worked  very  well.  Since  then  we  have  had  another  DNA  experiment 
which  looked  successful,  and  three  or  four  Livermore  events  where 
the  data  looked  very  good. 

We've  made  enough  measurements,  and  we  have  enough  data 
now  that  we  really  think  that  system  works  to  get  cavity  pressure. 
But  if  that's  true,  we  still  don't  know  why  the  history  from  one  event 
to  the  next  seems  to  vary  so  widely.  So  there  are  still  a  lot  of 
questions  to  be  answered  with  regard  to  cavity  pressure. 

Carothers:  You  describe  the  data  as  varying  widely  from  shot 
to  shot.  What  does  the  pressure  history  look  like?  There  is  the 
containment  lore  from  the  fifties  and  sixties  that  the  cavity  expands 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


249 


until  the  cavity  pressure  is  about  equal  to  overburden  pressure,  and 
then  it  gradually  decays  through  various  cooling  processes.  Do  you 
see  anything  like  that? 

Hudson:  What  we  think  is  happening  is  that  there  is  a  sort  of 
a  plateau  pressure,  a  constant  pressure  that  is  established  after 
cavity  growth,  which  then  stays  fairly  constant  for  a  while,  probably 
due  to  ablation,  mass  addition,  and  so  on.  The  energy  per  unit 
volume  probably  stays  constant  as  long  as  nothing  is  leaking  out. 

Carothers:  When  you  say  it  stays  constant  for  a  while,  how  long 
is  that?  Seconds,  minutes,  hours? 

Hudson:  That's  one  of  the  things  that  varies.  On  some  events 
it's  been  minutes.  On  Cornucopia,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  more 
like  hours.  The  period  during  which  the  pressure  is  more  or  less 
constant  varies  considerably.  And,  the  plateau  pressure  itself  varies 
considerably.  We've  seen  it  both  well  below  and  well  above  what 
we  thought  the  overburden  pressure  was.  We  don't  have  a  model 
yet. 

Carothers:  Perhaps  the  reason  you  don't  have  a  model  is 
because  there  is  no  good  model  of  cavity  growth,  in  the  following 
sense.  Cavities  that  have  been  reentered  are  not  spherical.  They 
are  not  the  shape  that  you  see  on  viewgraphs  where  the  predicted 
cavity  has  been  drawn  with  a  compass.  Cavities  are  lumpy,  and  some 
of  them  are  sort  of  flat,  and  so  on.  On  Rainier  they  did  a  lot  of  post¬ 
shot  reentry  work,  and  there  was  a  very  lumpy  looking  cavity.  And 
so  was  the  Gnome  cavity.  Maybe  you  don't  know  what  the  cavity 
volume  and  shape  is  on  the  various  shots. 

Hudson:  That  may  be  the  answer.  The  surface  to  volume  ratio 
may  be  important.  And  as  you  suggest,  the  contour  of  the  surface 
may  be  such  that  on  some  events  you  may  have  a  much  greater 
surface  to  volume  ratio  than  on  others,  and  consequently  you  have 
different  cooling  phenomena.  I  don't  know. 

I  think  the  reason  it's  so  interesting,  and  puzzling  at  the  same 
time,  is  that  cavity  growth  and  cavity  pressure  are  the  source 
function  for  the  gas  we're  trying  to  contain.  Yet  for  decades  we 
basically  have  ignored  this  part  of  the  problem,  in  terms  of 
modeling.  We've  made  very  little  progress.  We  have  very  little  new 
information,  because  we've  made  only  feeble  attempts  to  get  new 
information  concerning  cavity  growth  and  cavity  pressure. 


250 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Well,  cavities  are  different,  and  perhaps  that's  why 
your  results  are  different  from  shot  to  shot.  How  different?  Shape, 
almost  certainly.  As  you  said,  surface  to  volume  ratio.  And  then 
there  are  people  who  say  that  as  the  cavity  is  growing  the  material 
is  moving  out  radially,  and  stretching  tangentially,  the  pressure  is 
high,  and  during  that  time  many  hydrofractures  are  driven  out  from 
the  cavity.  They  don't  extend  a  long  way,  a  couple  of  cavity  radii 
or  so  at  most.  But  that  exposes  a  large  surface  of  cold  rock,  and  that 
cools  down  the  cavity,  dropping  the  pressure.  A  person  coming 
from  that  point  of  view  might  say  that  the  rocks  in  different  places 
have  different  fracture  susceptibilities,  and  so,  different  energy  loss 
histories.  And  therefore,  different  pressure  histories. 

Hudson:  That  might  very  well  be. 


Cavity  Temperature 

The  temperature  of  the  cavity  starts  at  a  very  high  value,  a 
million  degrees  or  so,  but  it  drops  very  rapidly  as  the  cavity 
expands.  The  only  real  information  on  the  temperature  and  its  time 
history  is  derived  from  examining  the  detonation  products  that  are 
separated  at  different  times  from  the  main  body  of  the  material  in 
the  cavity. 

Higgins:  At  the  very  high  temperatures  very  near  the  explosion 
the  transport  of  energy  is  very  rapid.  In  other  words,  after  the  shock 
has  gone  by  the  particle  velocities  are  high  enough  that  there  is  rapid 
communication  of  temperature  and  pressure  between  the  center  of 
the  expanding  gas  and  its  more  outward  regions.  That  goes  on  for 
some  fair  part  of  the  first  part  of  the  cavity  growth.  So,  the 
temperature  in  the  cavity  gas  goes  down  to  some  temperature  that 
is  considerably  less  than  the  electron  volt,  or  the  ten  thousand 
degrees,  that  many  of  the  calculators  are  fond  of  putting  on  their 
pressure  versus  time  charts. 

I  feel  that's  a  misleading  kind  of  calculation.  All  of  the 
evidence  from  the  cavity  radiochemistry  -  -  from  the  fractionation 
of  the  various  radiochemical  species  in  recovered  products  -  -  points 
to  the  fact  that  the  temperature  in  the  cavity,  by  the  time  the 
rebound  occurs,  which  is,  let's  say,  in  the  time  between  milliseconds 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


251 


and  seconds,  has  decreased  to  the  point  where  it's  not  much  above 
the  melting  point  of  the  rock.  It's  certainly  below  the  point  where 
there's  any  rock  vapor  left. 

That's  important,  because  it  fixes  the  maximum  threat.  The 
dynamic  phase  is  going  on  as  the  shock  wave  passes  out  and  leaves 
this  hot  stuff  behind.  The  rebound  comes  back,  and  that  happens 
within  a  few  hundred  milliseconds.  Because  of  the  rapid  exchange 
of  energy  in  the  cavity  up  to  that  time,  things  have  cooled  until  it's 
pretty  much  in  equilibrium;  the  energy  is  distributed  throughout 
everything  that's  within  that  cavity  radius.  My  argument  has  been 
that  the  initial  temperature,  for  calculations,  can't  be  much  differ¬ 
ent  than  the  vaporization  temperature  of  the  rock.  If  it  were  higher 
more  rock  would  vaporize  until  it  did  reach  the  temperature  of 
vaporization. 

Carothers:  That  seems  to  be  a  reasonable  argument. 

Higgins:  But  it's  hard  for  people  who  do  one-dimensional 
calculations  to  accept,  because  the  inside  zone  in  their  calculations 
is  always  at  ten  electron  volts,  which  is  a  hundred  thousand  degrees, 
after  the  cavity  expands.  The  reason  it  doesn't  stay  that  way  is  that 
anything  that  is  at  ten  electron  volts  is  very  reactive.  It's  going  to 
go  out  and  heat  up  the  next  thing  that's  nine  electron  volts,  or  one 
electron  volt,  and  that  time  is  short  compared  to  a  few  hundred 
milliseconds. 

The  difficulty  with  this  whole  discussion,  from  a  physics 
standpoint,  is  that  energy  transport  in  this  region  of,  say,  two-tenths 
of  an  electron  volt,  or  three-tenths  of  an  electron  volt,  is  something 
no  one  wants  to  deal  with.  The  times,  the  opacities,  the  reactions 
that  are  going  on  as  things  recombine,  and  you  get  ionized  states, 
and  sometimes  molecules  that  are  two  or  three  electrons  deficient 
are  all  things  that  are  not  easily  calculable.  In  fact,  they  are  pretty 
much,  as  a  general  rule,  unknown.  So,  nobody  wants  to  calculate 
it  because  nobody  likes  to  work  on  a  problem  that  doesn't  have  a 
nice  solution.  Scientists  don't  like  non-solutions. 

I  believe  that  all  of  the  evidence  points  to  the  fact  that  by  two 
hundred  milliseconds,  or  even  one  hundred  more  likely,  the  cavity 
has  cooled  to  about  two  thousand  degrees  Kelvin.  As  the  cavity  is 
cooling  down,  the  pressure  is  dropping,  and  so  everything  is  cool 
enough  that  the  cavity  gases  don't  have  enough  pressure  to  drive 
fractures. 


252 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


There  is  one  more  phase.  The  wall  of  the  cavity  has  a  huge 
temperature  gradient  in  it,  and  I  believe  that  what  happens  is  that 
the  water  in  the  rockock  volatilizes  and  pops  pieces  of  the  rockback 
into  the  cavity,  causing  further  cooling  down.  The  pop-back  is 
where  the  water  that  is  caught  in  the  pores  turns  to  steam  and 
expands.  Water  going  from  water  at  one  cubic  centimeter  per  gram 
goes  to  twenty  cubic  centimeters  per  gram  if  it  goes  from  three 
hundred  degrees  Kelvin  to  four  hundred  degrees  Kelvin.  And  that's 
considerably  below  the  two  thousand  degrees  that  might  be  only  a 
few  centimeters  away.  So,  I  believe  that  there  is  a  period  of 
exfoliation  that's  quite  rapid,  occurring  after  the  first  hundred  or  so 
milliseconds,  but  before  a  second. 

The  pressure  doesn't  change  much,  because  you're  adding 
more  mass  and  more  molecules.  The  temperature  goes  down 
because  you're  taking  energy  out  of  the  molecules  in  the  cavity  and 
warming  the  incoming  material  until  it's  in  equilibrium.  The  glass 
has  fallen  to  the  bottom  of  the  cavity,  together  with  a  lot  of  rubble, 
and  it's  now  at  about  the  melting  point  of  the  rock,  between  about 
eight  hundred  and  a  thousand  degrees  centigrade.  And  that  is  the 
cavity  we  explore  when  we  go  back  in  and  drill  or  mine. 

Sometime  a  lot  later,  and  it  is  an  unstable  thing,  the  roof  of  the 
cavity  just  falls  in.  It  might  even  start  to  fall  in  when  that  first  pop- 
off  of  the  water  vapor  in  the  water  pores  occurs.  If  the  rebound  has 
been  strong  enough  so  there  is  an  arch  formed,  then  it  will  stay  there 
for  a  while,  whether  an  hour  or  a  day,  I  don't  know.  If  that  arch  is 
not  very  strong,  especially  in  alluvium,  I  think  the  blow-off  of  the 
popcorn  might  very  well  start  the  chimney.  If  it's  real  close  to  the 
surface,  that's  what  happens.  And  that's  why  we  see,  in  certain 
other  kinds  of  special  circumstances,  where  you  have  reflecting 
surfaces  nearby,  very  early  collapse,  in  a  few  minutes.  Those  are  the 
cases  where  the  cavity  collapse  is  initiated  by  the  blow-off  of  the 
water  in  the  cavity  walls,  and  those  are  really  dangerous,  because  the 
pressure  is  still  fairly  high. 

Where  Does  All  That  Material  Go? 

Carothers:  John,  when  a  detonation  occurs,  a  big  cavity  forms. 
What  happened  to  all  the  material  that  used  to  be  in  the  cavity? 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow  253 

Rambo:  In  our  calculations  it's  displaced  outward.  We  see 
positive  outward  displacement.  So,  you've  taken  this  volume  and 
you've  distributed  it.  If  the  material  has  porosity  in  it,  which  it 
usually  does,  some  of  the  volume  is  taken  up  in  crushing  that  out. 
Although,  when  I  run  a  completely  saturated  calculation  I  still  get 
a  cavity  of  about  the  same  size.  The  calculations  tend  to  show  some 
positive  displacement  everywhere.  The  material  has  to  be  either 
compressed,  or  move  out.  I  think  the  outward  motion  is  mostly 
where  it  goes,  instead  of  in  crushing  the  material.  And,  the  surface 
can  move  up  just  a  little.  There  are  some  cases,  though,  where  it 
looks  as  though  you're  moving  out  material  to  make  the  cavity,  and 
then  the  surface  is  lower  too.  So,  yes,  where  does  all  that  material 
go? 

There  was  a  shot  we  fired,  called  Carpetbag.  From  the  gauges, 
the  surface  was  displaced  down,  compared  to  where  it  was  before 
the  shot.  That's  always  been  a  mystery.  I  tried  to  deal  with  that, 
and  I  was  unable  to  get  the  gauges  to  match  the  big  negative 
displacement  fairly  close  to  the  cavity.  I  didn't  see  that  in  the 
calculations.  Another  thing  that  happened  on  Carpetbag  is  that  the 
surface  kept  sinking  for  many  months  after  the  shot.  It  was  quite  an 
interesting  phenomenon.  I  don't  think  we've  seen  anything  quite 
like  that  in  other  areas. 

Carpetbag  was  below  the  water  table,  and  so  the  material  was 
wet.  I  think  the  material  must  have  been  a  matrix  which  was  quite 
wet  and  quite  weak,  and  that  just  the  slightest  hit  from  anything 
would  have  have  let  that  matrix  rearrange,  and  relieve  that  whole 
area. 

Carothers:  Dan,  where  do  you  think  all  the  material  that  was 
in  the  cavity  goes?  Cavities  are  pretty  large.  Even  for  a  kiloton  or 
so  you  could  put  this  building  in  the  cavity. 

Patch:  Let  me  say  where  it  doesn't  seem  to  go.  One  can  easily 
imagine  what  you  do  when  you  grow  the  cavity  is  basically  to  crush 
the  rock  out  to  some  radius.  That  seems  to  be  a  reasonable  picture 
for  something  that's  got  a  lot  of  air  voids  in  it;  dry  alluvium,  or 
something  of  that  sort.  But,  our  experience  in  wet  tuff  is  that  if  you 
go  in  and  take  samples  post-shot  it's  very  hard  to  see  that  you  have 
what  I  will  call  a  completely  compacted  region,  even  quite  close  to 
the  shot. 


254 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Now,  we  have  seen,  certainly  on  some  events,  where  it  looks 
like  you're  getting  this  air  void  back.  Preshot  you  have  a  one  percent 
air  void.  Post-shot  you  get  these  samples  out  and  you  measure 
them,  and  they  still  have  one  percent  air  voids.  You  ask  yourself, 
"How  can  this  be?"  It's  a  very  strange  thing  to  have  happen.  But 
if  you  look  at  the  details  of  the  crush  curve,  you'll  see  that  this  one 
percent  air  void  only  takes  a  little  load  to  crush  it  out. 

Terra  Tek  has  done  some  beautiful  work  where  they've  looked 
with  this  technique  of  injecting  metal  into  the  open  pore  space,  and 
then  etching  the  sample  and  looking  at  it  with  a  laser.  It's  very 
interesting  work,  and  you  can  see  that  what  has  happened  to  the 
rock  is  that  the  stresses  have  generated  lots  and  lots  of  very  fine 
fractures,  so  when  you  take  the  sample  out  of  the  ground  there's  a 
tendency  for  these  little  fractures  to  open  up  a  little.  It  doesn't  have 
to  be  much  to  get  the  one  percent  back,  although  that's  a  different 
kind  of  air  void.  So  I  think  the  rock  actually  does  take  up  some  of 
the  cavity  volume,  but  it's  darn  hard  to  prove  from  the  data. 

I  don't  think  anybody  can  conclusively  say,  "Yes,  see,  this  rock 
used  to  be  one  percent  air  voids,  and  now  it's  smashed."  But  we  do 
have  suggestions  that  there  is  some  cavity  growth  that  is  accommo¬ 
dated  by  the  crushing  of  the  material.  1  think  what  you  basically  do 
is  you  deform  the  material  around  the  cavity,  and  because  of  the  r- 
cubed  effect  it  turns  out  once  you  get  a  little  ways  away  from  the 
cavity  you're  talking  about  a  very  small  amount  of  deformation  over 
an  enormous  amount  of  material.  The  cavity  has  a  lot  of  volume, 
but  how  much  more  volume  do  you  have  when  you  go  out  three  or 
four  cavity  radii. 

Following  the  Rainier  event  there  were  extensive  reentry 
observations  made.  From  observations  made  in  early  1961  Ross 
Wadman  and  Bill  Richards  (UCRL  6586,  July  1961,  Postshot 
Geologic  Studies  of  Excavations  Below  Rainier  Ground  Zero)  made 
this  comment:  "Block  movement  rather  than  rock  compression 
accounts  for  the  rock  displaced  from  the  cavity.  The  rock  moved 
radially  away  from  ground  zero  along  shock  produced  shears  that, 
in  many  cases,  were  strongly  influenced  by  preshot  zones  of 
weakness.  The  lithologic  rock  units,  below  the  cavity  have  been 
thinned  and  depressed  but  not  appreciably  distorted  or  mixed. 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


255 


Rock  Melt  and  Non-Condensable  Gases 

Carothers:  A  kiloton  of  rock  melted  per  kiloton  of  yield  is  a 
number  often  mentioned,  but  there  are  other  numbers  used  some¬ 
times.  How  much  rock  does  get  melted,  and  how  do  we  know  that? 

Higgins:  Well,  the  question  of  how  much  rock  gets  melted  is 
an  awfully  good  one,  and  the  how  do  we  know  is  an  also  good 
question.  The  methodology  was,  and  is,  to  take  a  piece  of  rock  that 
was  melted  by  the  detonation,  do  chemistry  on  it,  and  determine 
what  fraction  of  some  chemical  species  that  is  unique  to  the 
explosion  is  found  in  that  piece  of  rock.  Then  you  presume  that 
fraction  represents  the  fraction  of  the  total  melted  rock,  of  which 
you  have  a  little  piece. 

Carothers:  So,  if  I  have  a  piece  of  the  solidified  melt  that 
weighs  ten  pounds,  and  I  find  a  millionth  of  some  device-produced 
isotope  in  there  I  say,  "There  must  have  been  a  million  times  ten 
pounds  of  melted  rock." 

Higgins:  Right. 

Carothers:  Isn't  that  rather  presumptuous  of  you  chemists,  to 
make  such  a  large  extrapolation? 

Higgins:  Well,  yes,  it  is  rather  presumptuous,  but  after  doing 
literally  hundreds  of  samples  we  have  found  that  the  answer  each 
one  of  those  hundreds  of  samples  gives  is  essentially  the  same.  But 
not  always,  which  is  why  I  said  that  it  is  a  very  good  question.  It  is 
still  an  open  question.  However,  there  was  a  time  when  everyone 
thought  they  knew  that  answer  precisely. 

Carothers:  To  know  something  precisely  is  to  calculate  it.  An 
experimentalist  never  knows  anything  precisely. 

Higgins:  It's  almost  that  bad.  From  the  earliest  samples  there 
were  definitions  people  tried  to  follow.  There  were  several  kinds  of 
melted  rock  recovered,  and  one  of  them  was  called  "puddle  glass." 
Puddle  glass  was  defined  as  being  a  non-vesicular,  black,  shiny, 
glassy  material. 

From  the  first  few  hundred  samples  it  was  found  that  the 
numbers  one  obtained  for  puddle  glass  per  kiloton  were  remarkably 


256  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

consistent,  and  constant  at  about  eight  hundred  tons  of  puddle  glass 
per  kiioton  of  fission.  Or,  if  you  wanted  to  be  more  approximate, 
a  kiioton  for  a  kiioton  of  yield. 

The  other  kinds  of  glass  that  were  found,  which  were  called 
variously  chimney  glass  or  frothy  samples,  gave  numbers  which  were 
more  scattered.  In  the  range  that  I've  seen  they  were  from  about 
two  hundred  tons  per  kiioton  as  the  very  smallest  number,  up  to  as 
much  as  three  thousand  tons  per  kiioton.  And  I  would  guess  that 
even  larger  numbers  could  be  measured  if  you  took  a  chunk  of  rock 
that  you  could  not  visually  identify  as  glassy  melt,  and  analyzed  it 
by  that  same  technique. 

Carothers:  When  you  talk  about  determining  the  amount  of 
melt  by  taking  a  very  small  sample,  determining  what  you  believe  to 
be  a  fraction  of  some  isotope  that  was  produced,  and  then  multiply¬ 
ing  that  small  sample  mass  by  the  supposed  total  amount  of  that 
isotope,  you're  doing  the  same  kind  of  thing  you  do  with  cloud 
sampling  on  atmospheric  shots.  You're  making  the  assumption  that 
things  have  been  homogeneously  mixed,  and  that  you've  got  a 
representative  sample. 

Higgins:  That's  right.  And  the  only  proof  of  whether  that  is 
true  or  not  true  is  from  internal  tests.  One  such  internal  test  is  to 
look  for  a  fraction  of  the  fissile  material,  for  example,  as  compared 
to  the  fraction  of  an  external  tracer,  and  look  at  the  variability  of 
one  to  the  other  in  the  same  set  of  samples.  If  they're  widely 
different,  then  we  could  guess  that  none  of  the  isotopes  are 
representative  of  the  total. 

Carothers:  The  process  is  similar  to  what  you  do  in  atmo¬ 
spheric  cloud  sampling,  but  it  must  be  a  harder  problem.  When  you 
sample  a  cloud  after  an  atmospheric  detonation,  you're  only  trying 
to  determine  the  bomb  fraction;  you're  not  trying  to  determine  the 
size  of  the  cloud.  Here  you're  trying  to  determine  the  size  of  the 
cloud,  as  it  were. 

Higgins:  Yes.  But  while  the  numbers  weren't  published  often, 
we  also  determined  the  size  of  the  cloud  in  atmospheric  testing. 
And,  a  rather  surprising  number  is  that  a  kiioton  of  lofted  material 
per  kiioton  of  yield  is  valid  for  an  atmospheric  burst,  as  long  as  the 
fireball  touches  the  ground.  That  was  an  astounding  discovery. 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow  257 

Carothers:  You're  beginning  to  sound  as  though  a  kiloton  per 
kiloton  is  a  magical  number. 

Higgins:  Yes,  it  almost  sounds  that  way. 

In  the  beginning  of  underground  testingwe  used  symmetrically 
placed  tracers  in  the  ground  zero  room.  We  put  them  at  the  corners 
of  a  cube,  or  perhaps  an  even  more  ordered  symmetry  than  that. 
We  put  them  at  points  representing  the  faces  and  corners  of  a  cubic 
array,  for  example.  We  found  there  were  exceptions  to  perfect 
mixing  for  very  small  yields.  But  at  about  one  or  two  kilotons  and 
above,  it  really  didn't  make  any  difference  if  we  put  in  six  tracers, 
or  one,  or  four.  We  got  essentially  uniform  mixing. 

The  implication  of  all  that  is,  there  is  a  mixing  of  vaporized 
material  in  the  early  cavity,  while  it's  growing.  The  particle 
velocities  are  very  high,  and  the  particles  in  the  growing  cavity  make 
many,  many  transits  across  the  gaseous  region  before  it  stabilizes 
and  starts  to  condense.  If  that  weren't  true,  putting  a  tracer  on  two 
sides  of  the  device  would  give  different  results  in  the  two  directions 
in  the  final  cavity,  and  that  was  never  seen  on  larger  yields.  On  very 
small  yields  we  did  find  pronounced  asymmetries. 

During  the  1960's  we  did  experiments  where  we  had  open 
holes  below  the  device,  to  try  to  separate  the  radioactive  debris 
from  the  center  of  energy.  We  even  built  rather  unsophisticated 
reflectors,  and  those  were  successful  to  a  degree.  But  if  you  think 
about  it  a  little  bit,  if  you  deflect  all  these  very  hot  fission  products, 
they  are  hot  enough  to  interact  with  their  surroundings  and  cause 
new  gas  to  be  formed,  which  then  mixes  back  in  the  direction  the 
fission  products  came  from. 

In  one  experiment  we  put  several  hundred  grams  of  U233  in 
the  bottom  of  a  hole  which  was  open  to  about  two  hundred  feet 
below  the  device.  In  the  glassy  material  that  was  recovered  we 
looked  for  just  the  presence  of  U233.  What  we  found  was  as  large 
a  fraction  of  the  U233,  which  was  two  hundred  feet  from  the 
device,  as  of  the  device  material  itself.  So,  the  233  bounced  out 
of  the  bottom  of  the  hole,  back  up  the  hole,  and  mixed  with  all  the 
gaseous  material  pretty  uniformly.  While  we  got  a  big  fraction  of 
the  total  radioactivity  directed  down  the  hole,  what  was  in  the 
bottom  of  the  hole  mixed  very  well  with  those  things  that  were 
where  the  device  went  off. 


258 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


What  was  implicit  in  the  results  of  those  experiments  was  that 
the  glass  was  a  consequence  of  a  multistage  set  of  vaporizations. 
That  is,  the  initial  device  energy  vaporized  material,  and  the  shock 
wave  generated  from  that  vaporized  material  continued  to  form 
more  vapor  outside  of  that  region.  So,  simply  directing  the  first 
vapor  down  the  hole  didn't  do  anything  at  all  about  the  material  that 
was  being  generated  by  the  expanding  shock  wave.  Very  crudely, 
what  those  experiments  showed  was  that  the  vapor  first  formed  was 
about  seventy  or  eighty  tons  per  kiloton,  and  that  the  additional 
melting  and  vaporization  made  up  the  other  eight  hundred  or  nine 
hundred  that  we  observed  from  the  total  sample  later  on.  The 
surprise,  I  think,  was  that  such  a  small  fraction  of  what  was  finally 
melted  and  vaporized  was  produced  by  the  device  itself.  It  was 
about  one  tenth,  or  a  little  less. 

Carothers:  The  cavity  is  growing,  and  there's  some  vapor  in 
there;  pretty  dense,  but  vaporized  material.  You  are  saying  that  to 
the  particles  it  is  a  thin  vapor;  the  mean  free  paths  are  long.  It's 
diffuse  enough  that  the  particles  can  move  freely  through  it. 

Higgins:  The  conclusion  is  correct,  but  to  think  of  it  as  being 
very  thin  is  probably  not  correct.  A  better  way  to  think  of  it  is  as 
an  extremely  hot  region  where  the  particle  velocities  initially  are 
very  high  -  -  like  eighty  centimeters  per  microsecond. 

Carothers:  And  everything  is  highly  ionized.  Since  the  atomic 
scattering  cross  sections  are  large  compared  to  nuclear  scattering, 
if  you  strip  the  atoms  of  most  of  their  electrons  the  mean  free  paths 
becomes  quite  long. 

Higgins:  That's  precisely  correct.  You  have  particle  velocities 
approaching  many  tens  of  centimeters  per  microsecond.  The  vapor 
density,  including  atoms  and  electrons,  is  grams  per  cubic  centime¬ 
ter,  or  some  significant  fraction  of  that,  but  with  such  high  velocities 
the  transit  time  for  any  sensible  number  of  meters  is  not  long.  The 
expansion  time  of  the  cavity,  whether  it's  from  a  kiloton  or  a 
hundred  kilotons,  is  in  the  order  of  a  fraction  of  a  second  up  to,  for 
the  very  largest  yields,  a  second.  So,  when  the  particles  are  going 
many  centimeters  per  microsecond  you  have  time  for  a  lot  of 
transits  across  the  cavity,  and  bouncing  around,  and  scattering,  and 
normalizations  of  the  various  regions  with  each  other. 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


259 


Carothers:  If  you  keep  getting  consistent  numbers  from  the 
puddle  glass,  that  also  would  imply  that  it  doesn't  matter  much  what 
the  original  material  was;  tuff,  or  alluvium,  or  basalt,  or  whatever. 

Higgins:  Yes.  That  was  the  early  conclusion,  and  the  early 
experiments  verified  that,  in  a  way.  Our  first  experiments  in 
granite,  which  were  Hard  Hat  and  Pile  Driver,  produced  slightly  less 
melt,  but  not  so  much  so  that  one  would  say  it  was  a  different 
mechanism.  I  believe,  in  retrospect,  and  now  that  we've  looked  at 
material  from  a  lot  more  sites  in  the  tuff  and  alluvium,  that  those 
were  spuriously  obtained  results.  It  really  isn't  true  in  general  that 
the  same  amount  of  rock  is  melted  per  kiloton  at  different  sites. 
That  was  an  accident  of  the  composition  of  the  materials.  Ted 
Butkovitch  and  several  other  people  have  more  carefully  measured 
some  of  these  same  numbers.  They  add  the  so-called  puddle  glass 
to  all  of  the  other  glass  and  ask  "How  much  was  heated  above  some 
temperature?"  The  usual  temperature  they  use  is  a  thousand 
degrees  centigrade.  And  they  find  that  number  varies  with  porosity 
and  water  content. 

Carothers:  The  more  water,  with  its  high  specific  heat,  the  less 
melt? 

Higgins:  No,  it  goes  the  other  way.  The  more  water,  the  more 
molten  material  there  is.  The  reason  that's  true  is  that  water  and 
almost  any  silicate  rock  or  compound  form  eutectics  that  have 
melting  points  that  are  sharply  less  than  the  melting  points  of  the 
pure  rock. 

In  our  initial  work  we'd  always  go  to  the  laboratory  and 
carefully  dry  the  samples.  Then  we  would  measure  all  of  the  things 
like  melting  points,  and  vaporization  temperatures,  and  so  on.  That 
turns  out  to  be  a  gross  mistake.  We  discovered  the  hard  way  that 
when  you're  dealing  with  the  earth's  materials,  water  is  an  intrinsic 
part  of  the  system.  To  remove  it  distorts  all  of  the  results  from  that 
point  forward. 

There  were  things  that  people  had  worked  on  for  a  long  time 
that  were  changed  and  amplified  by  the  work  at  the  Test  Site.  I 
don't  mean  that  we've  been  that  remarkable  in  our  science  in 
underground  testing,  but  it  really  wasn't  until  we  began  to  look  at 
the  molten  rock  formed  by  nuclear  explosions  that  volcanologists 
examined  their  numbers  to  determine  what  temperatures  existed  in 
the  earth  to  form  lava.  Prior  to  the  underground  tests  the 


260  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

volcanologists  did  the  same  thing  we  did.  They  dried  out  their  lava 
samples,  and  said,  "This  lava  came  out  of  the  ground  at  fifteen 
hundred  centigrade."  Then,  when  they  went  and  looked  at  the 
volcano,  what  was  coming  out  of  the  ground  was  coming  out  at  nine 
hundred  degrees  centigrade.  And  they  found  some  lavas,  in  western 
Colorado,  that  indicated  six  hundred  degrees  centigrade.  How  in 
the  world  did  those  volcanos  produce  that  molten  rock  at  six 
hundred  degrees  when  everybody  knows  volcanos  start  out  at 
fifteen  hundred? 

So,  there  were  elaborate  theories  about  secondary  melting 
producing  two  or  three  times  more  lava  than  the  primary  vent 
produced,  and  that  meant  you  really  had  to  reduce  the  measured 
volcanic  flows  two,  or  three,  or  four-fold,  because  what  you  saw 
really  wasn't  the  amount  that  came  out  of  the  volcano  itself.  The 
theory  was  that  what  was  produced  was  really  a  lot  less  than  what 
you  saw,  but  it  was  so  hot  that  it  melted  a  lot  of  other  rock.  There 
were  a  lot  of  things  like  that  floating  around  in  the  literature. 

Now,  the  tuff  at  the  Test  Site  came  out  of  a  volcano.  And  when 
it  came  out,  it  came  out  as  a  solid,  even  though  a  pretty  hot  solid. 
Some  of  it  came  out  as  a  liquid,  but  not  very  much.  But  water 
condensed  into  this  hot  solid  almost  immediately,  and  then  it  melts 
at  around  eight  hundred  or  nine  hundred  degrees  centigrade.  If  you 
take  the  water  out  of  it,  it  melts  at  fifteen  hundred  or  so.  We  were 
extremely  puzzled  by  that  until  we  began  to  do  some  experiments 
at  modest  pressures,  keeping  some  of  the  water  in  it.  And  lo  and 
behold,  the  more  water  that  was  in  it,  the  lower  the  melting  point. 
And,  of  course,  the  lower  the  melting  point  the  less  energy  it  takes 
to  heat  it  to  melting. 

The  point  is  that  the  amount  of  melt  is  very  much  dependent 
on  the  amount  of  water  that  is  present  -  -  the  more  water  there  is, 
the  more  melt,  and  the  less  water,  the  less  melt.  So,  when  we  said 
there  was  the  same  amount  of  melt  from  granite  and  tuff,  we  were 
looking  at  only  that  portion  of  the  tuff  melt  that  made  puddle  glass, 
and  comparing  it  with  the  total  melt  from  granite,  where  all  of  the 
melt  was  essentially  puddle  glass.  They  turned  out  to  be  very  close 
to  the  same  amount,  but  that  was  a  fortuitous  accident.  The  total 
melt  from  a  a  detonation  in  tuff,  we  now  know,  varies  with  water 
content,  and  it  goes  from  a  low  of  about  a  thousand  tons  per  kiloton 
up  to  about  three  thousand.  Somewhere  in  that  factor  of  three,  all 
of  the  experiments  that  we've  looked  at  fall. 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow 


261 


Carothers:  How  could  it  get  to  be  as  big  as  three  thousand  tons 
per  kiloton? 

Higgins:  By  the  inclusion  of  all  of  the  secondary  melted  rock. 
And  there's  another  thing  to  remember;  the  rock  vapor  that's 
initially  produced  is  much  hotter  than  the  vaporization  point  of  the 
rock.  Much  hotter.  So,  a  little  of  that  rock  vapor  can  go  onto  a  cold 
rock  and  vaporize  it  too,  and  still  the  total  is  maybe  right  at  the 
vaporization  point.  The  heat  capacity  per  unit  mass  of  rock  vapor 
is  not  very  different  than  the  heat  capacity  of  the  solid  rock  itself. 
Slightly  less,  but  very  slightly  less.  So,  if  you  have  a  gram  of  rock 
vapor  that's  three  thousand  degrees  above  the  vaporization  point, 
it  can  very  happily  vaporize  two  more  grams  of  rock,  and  you'll  end 
up  with  three  grams  at  the  vaporization  point.  That  mechanism 
probably  accounts  for  a  lot  of  the  molten  material  we  see  post-shot; 
the  secondary  vaporization  and  melting. 

Carothers:  The  material  you  find  in  fractures? 

Higgins:  Yes,  or  even  in  the  puddle  glass.  The  way  we  get  the 
occasional  sample  of  the  initial  rock  that's  vaporized  by  the  shot  is 
from  the  material  that's  frozen  out  in  fractures.  When  it  goes  into 
a  fracture  it  is  essentially  frozen  instantly.  Something  that  gives  us 
information  about  this  comes  from  the  tunnel  line-of-sight  shots. 
When  the  pipe  closure  fails  drastically,  a  little  tiny  fraction,  a  solid 
angle's  worth  if  you  like,  of  that  initial  vapor  gets  directed  out  a  very 
long  distance.  We've  occasionally,  unfortunately,  seen  that  hap¬ 
pen.  It  cools  off,  and  it  has  so  little  total  energy  that  it  can't  cause 
any  more  melt.  When  you  work  back,  it  always  turns  out  to  be 
between  seventy,  eighty,  or  ninety  tons  per  kiloton.  That  does  kind 
of  prove  these  speculations  that  are  done  from  calculations,  and 
thermodynamics,  and  some  other  arguments  are  correct. 

Carothers:  When  you  say  seventy,  or  eighty,  or  ninety  tons  per 
kiloton,  you  mean  that's  the  initial  amount  of  vapor  that's  produced 
directly  from  the  device  itself? 

Higgins:  Right.  That's  the  initial  rock  vapor.  Of  course,  the 
device  doesn't  really  make  much  contribution  to  that  mass.  In  the 
early  days  we  used  to  say  that  we  could  approximate  the  device  by 
putting  a  ton  of  iron  where  the  device  was,  and  that  was  a  good 
approximation.  If  you  mix  in  all  of  the  construction  materials  and 
the  canister  in  with  the  device,  that's  about  a  ton.  And  if  you  mix 


262  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

the  molecular  weights,  starting  with  ninety-two  for  uranium  and  one 
for  hydrogen,  iron  is  about  right.  It's  sort  of  the  geometric  mean 
of  everything  that's  around. 

Carothers:  We  have  talked  about  the  amount  of  rock  that  is 
melted  per  kiloton.  When  that  is  melted,  how  much  carbon  dioxide 
is  produced? 

Higgins:  Well,  that  is  part,  but  just  part,  of  the  problem  of  non¬ 
condensable  gases  produced  by  the  explosion.  Carbon  dioxide  is 
sort  of  the  generic  name  for  the  non-condensable  gases  produced. 
It's  clear  there  are  quite  a  few  of  them,  and  the  reason  they  are 
important  is  that  when  we  say  that  we  can  contain  the  explosion,  we 
really  mean  that  we  can  contain  the  gases  that  carry  all  the  various 
radioactive  materials. 

First,  there  are  the  vaporized  rock  gases.  They  condenses 
really  rapidly  because  they  go  from  vapor  to  liquid  at  three  thousand 
centigrade  or  so,  and  there's  a  lot  of  cold  rock  around,  so  those 
vapors  don't  go  very  far.  The  next  least  condensable  thing  is  water, 
and  steam  can  go  a  little  bit  further  than  the  rock  vapors.  When, 
on  the  rare  occasion  the  steam  gets  out  it's  pretty  catastrophic,  and 
it's  very  spectacular.  Those  events  are  very  distressing  to  the 
containment  people.  There  are  tons  and  tons  and  tons  of  steam 
present  in  the  cavity  prior  to  its  condensation  to  water.  If  it  finds 
a  path  out  it  can  carry  large  numbers  of  curies,  usually  on  the  order 
of  a  hundred  thousand  curies  of  radioactive  material  per  kiloton,  out 
with  it. 

That  is  sort  of  the  last  violent  level  of  non-condensable  gases. 
Below  that,  on  a  scale  of  colder  and  colder  condensation,  there  are 
carbon  dioxide,  and  methane,  and  hydrogen,  and  other  permanent 
gases  at  room  temperature,  that  are  produced  by  the  thermal 
decomposition  of  things  that  surround  the  explosion.  On  some  of 
the  early  tests  we  observed  that  the  test  would  be  contained, 
including  the  rock  vapor  and  the  steam,  but  that  on  surface  collapse, 
or  on  a  time  scale  of  a  few  tens  of  minutes,  or  hours,  following 
detonation  there  would  be  clouds  of  radioactive  gas  rolling  around 
the  region  of  the  shot.  They  were  invisible,  but  they  carried  what 
turned  out  to  be  a  large  numbers  of  curies  of  radioactive  gases. 


Cavities  and  How  They  Grow  263 

Now,  fortunately,  in  all  the  cases  that  were  documented,  those 
gases  were  noble  gases,  and  they  are  biologically  inert.  There  was 
great  concern  at  the  time  that  they  might  contain  radioactive  iodine, 
but  in  spite  of  intensive  efforts  no  great  amount  of  iodine  was  ever 
found  in  those  gases. 

Carothers:  You'd  think  there  could  be.  There's  the  iodine- 
xenon  link. 

Higgins:  Yes,  and  there's  lots  of  xenon,  but  almost  no  iodine. 
It's  a  fortunate  fact  of  the  decay  sequences  that  it  happens  that  way. 

When  we  examine  those  unfortunate  experiments,  and  look  for 
reasons  for  that  radioactive  gas,  there  was  first  the  association  of 
certain  areas  of  the  Test  Site  with  that  phenomenon.  The  next  step 
was,  what  is  different  about  those  areas  of  the  Test  Site?  It  was 
found,  number  one,  that  the  bad  experiments  always  occurred  in  the 
alluvium,  and  not  in  the  tuff.  Number  two,  they  always,  almost, 
occurred  in  regions  where  the  alluvial  material  contained  large 
amounts  of  Paleozoic  carbonate  gravel.  And  the  worst  ones  were 
from  Area  5,  which  means  the  Frenchman  Flat  side  of  the  pass  when 
you  go  out  to  the  CP.  There  were  others,  from  the  far  north  end 
of  Yucca  Valley;  Area  2,  Area  10,  and  to  a  lesser  degree,  Area  8. 
In  examining  those,  the  presence  of  carbonate  rocks  was  observed. 

The  carbonate  decomposes  at  high  temperatures,  and  pro¬ 
duces  carbon  dioxide,  which  then  displaces  the  gas  that's  in  the 
pores  in  the  rock,  as  in  a  sponge,  and  pushes  that  out  of  the  way. 
As  soon  as  it  pushes  all  of  the  gas  out  of  the  way  all  the  way  to  the 
surface,  seepage  will  occur,  if  there's  enough  air-filled  porosity 
between  the  detonation  point  and  the  surface,  it  will  push  out  until 
it's  expanded  to  atmospheric  pressure,  and  then  it'll  just  stop. 

Carothers:  Presumably  there  is  some  association  between  how 
much  carbonate  rock  is  present,  how  much  of  that  rock  is  melted, 
and  how  much  carbon  dioxide  will  be  formed.  Does  anybody  know 
that,  or  do  they  just  estimate  it? 

Higgins:  I'd  say  that  at  the  present  time  it's  an  educated 
estimate.  What  has  been  measured  is  the  temperature  at  which  the 
carbon  dioxide  is  given  off,  and  that  is  somewhat  less  than  the 
melting  point  of  the  rock.  It's  like  six  hundred  and  fifty,  or  seven 
hundred  degrees  centigrade. 


264 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Then  I  would  be  right  in  saying,  "Weil,  if  there  are 
eight  hundred  and  seventy  tons  of  melt  per  kiloton,  ail  the  carbonate 
in  those  eight  hundred  and  seventy  tons  is  going  to  be  decom¬ 
posed." 

Higgins:  Yes.  A  nitpicker  would  say  it  should  be  a  little  larger 
than  that,  but  not  very  much.  The  question  is,  where  is  the 
carbonate  rock?  if  you  move  the  working  point  into  a  layer  that 
doesn't  have  any  carbonate,  you  would  say  there  wouldn't  be  any 
carbon  dioxide  generated.  That  isn't  quite  consistent  with  the 
observations.  The  reason  is  that  when  collapse  occurs,  if  there's 
carbonate  right  above  the  cavity  that  can  fail  into  the  hot  cavity, 
some  of  that  can  get  decomposed.  But,  it  would  be  much  smaller 
than  if  the  working  point  were  in  that  carbonate  region.  So,  those 
little  qualifications  notwithstanding,  it's  the  general  assumption  that 
the  amount  melted  is  the  amount  interacting  to  form  carbonate. 

The  other  kind  of  non-condensable  gas  is  that  formed  chemi¬ 
cally  by  the  reaction  of  metals  with  water  to  release  hydrogen.  It 
could  be  the  iron  or  aluminum  in  the  canister,  or  a  lot  of  other 
things.  One  of  the  more  exotic  is  boron  carbide,  which  can  interact 
with  water;  one  boron  carbide  can  make  seven  hydrogen  molecules. 
But  the  chemistry  is  the  same.  It  has  to  be  in  the  melt  region  to  be 
hot  enough,  and  be  mixed  with  water,  which  is  steam  under  those 
circumstances.  Of  course,  there's  plenty  of  water  around.  If  you 
want  to  approximate  the  world  you  take  silicon  dioxide,  plus  water 
on  an  equal  molar  basis,  and  that's  pretty  good.  You're  only  making 
second  and  third  order  corrections  to  put  in  the  calcium,  and  the 
aluminum,  and  the  carbon,  and  ail  the  other  stuff. 

Carothers:  Funny,  Gary,  that  with  all  that  silicon  around  we 
ended  up  carbon-based. 

Higgins:  Isn't  it?  There  is  one  little  fact  of  nature,  however, 
that  says  silicon  was  important.  That  is  that  the  sense  and 
orientation  of  the  DNA  molecule  is  identical  to  that  of  the  silica  in 
a  glass  structure  —  I  learned  this  fact  from  Bill  Libby.  And  I  maintain 
that  DNA  got  its  pattern  by  being  on  a  clay  particle,  and  that  the 
first  live  reproducible  virii  came  from  clay.  That  is,  they  were 
organic  molecules  that  got  the  pattern,  and  replicated  off  a  piece  of 
clay. 


265 


10 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters 

There  are  many  observable  things  that  occur  after  a  detonation 
takes  place,  and  the  cavity  has  reached  its  full  growth.  At  some  time 
the  roof  of  the  cavity  gives  way,  and  the  overlying  rock  falls  into  the 
cavity  volume.  This  fall  of  material  sometimes  causes  the  surface 
to  slump  and  form  what  is  called  a  crater,  although  purists  call  the 
subsidence  that  occurs  a  “sink.”  A  crater  is  something  that  is 
formed  when  material  is  ejected  from  an  area,  and  there  are  a  few 
true  craters  on  the  Test  Site,  the  Sedan  crater  being  the  most 
impressive  example.  Here  sinks  and  craters  will  all  be  called 
craters,  bowing  to  the  overwhelming  majority  who  use  that  nomen¬ 
clature. 

How  and  why  and  when  cavities  collapse,  what  the  conditions 
are  in  the  column  of  displaced  material  that  often,  but  not  always 
reaches  the  surface,  and  the  reasons  for  the  shape  and  sizes  of  the 
surface  craters  is  largely  unknown.  There  are  some  correlations  that 
can  be  inferred. 

Keller:  It  was  in  using  the  data  bank  I  had  put  together  that  I 
discovered  the  correlation  between  crater  dimensions  and  yield, 
and  some  other  things  like  that.  One  thing  1  noticed  was  that  the 
line-of-sight  pipe  events  always  collapsed  much  faster  than  the 
others.  And  I  also  discovered  that  there  was  a  good  correlation,  if 
you  presume  bulking,  between  the  dimensions  of  the  cavities,  as 
best  we  knew  them,  and  the  dimensions  of  the  craters,  and  the  yield. 

You  would  intuitively  think  there  had  to  be  some  correlation, 
except  it  was  popular  then,  and  even  now  in  some  peoples  minds, 
to  think  that  compaction  was  equally  as  probable  as  bulking  during 
the  chimneying  process.  Since  then  the  subject  has  been  picked  up 
at  Los  Alamos  by  Erik  Jones  at  one  time,  and  Tom  Weaver,  and  Tom 
Kunkle,  so  there  have  been  three  more  resurrections  of  that  subject. 
Each  time  there  was  a  larger  data  bank  and  better  statistical 
techniques  for  analyzing  it,  but  nothing  new  was  discovered;  it  was 
only  refined.  One  surprising  thing  was  that  there  was  an  amazing 
lack  of  scatter  in  the  fits  to  the  data. 


266  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

The  thing  I  always  liked  about  the  crater  dimensions  was  that 
they  were  the  best  known  features.  They  used  to  do  very  detailed 
contour  mappings  of  the  craters,  and  so  you  could  really  tell  exactly 
what  the  volume  was.  And  there  was  a  pre-shot  and  post-shot 
difference  map.  Today  you  don't  know  that  as  well  because  they 
don't  do  that  before  and  after  comparison. 

It  turned  out  that  the  depth  of  the  crater,  not  the  volume,  was 
the  most  sensitive  characteristic  of  the  crater  with  regard  to  the 
yield.  The  crater  radius  was  the  first  order  correction  to  that,  and 
still  the  volume  wasn't.  I'm  not  sure  why  that's  true.  Many  people 
tried  to  relate  the  crater  volume  to  the  yield.  They  got  very  poor 
results,  so  they  were  just  turned  off  by  the  whole  concept,  and  were 
rather  outspoken  about  how  you  couldn't  tell  anything  about  the 
event  from  the  crater  dimensions. 

Carothers:  Craters  come  in  a  lot  of  different  shapes.  There  are 
ones  people  call  post  holes,  others  they  call  dishes,  and  there  are 
various  other  shapes.  How  can  it  be  that  the  depth  of  the  crater, 
which  seems  to  be  so  variable  from  area  to  area  for  equal  yields,  tell 
you  anything  about  the  yield? 

Keller:  Well,  let  me  tell  you  what  the  simple  relationship  was. 
The  first  thing  I  took  was  a  column  straight  down  the  middle  of  the 
chimney.  I  took  the  height  of  that  column  before  collapse  to  be 
from  the  top  of  the  cavity  to  the  surface,  and  after  collapse  to  be 
from  the  bottom  of  the  cavity  to  the  bottom  of  the  crater.  Any 
difference  in  that  dimension  before  and  after  collapse  was  bulking 
or  compaction  of  the  rocks  in  the  chimney.  I  expected  that  there 
would  be  convergence  of  that  because  of  the  slumping  you  see  in 
craters,  and  also  because  of  the  collapse  of  the  cavity  into  the 
bottom.  And  so  I  expected  bulking,  and  I  just  plotted  that  bulking 
factor,  the  ratio  of  those  two  columns  versus  the  depth  of  burial. 
There  was  a  lot  of  scatter,  but  it  was  not  nearly  as  much  as  I  had 
expected.  This  bulking  factor  was  very  high  for  low  depths  of  burial 
and  yields,  and  it  asymptotically  approached  a  value  of  about 
eighteen  percent,  as  I  recall,  for  high  yields  and  very  large  depths 
of  burial.  That  was  the  first  clue  that  there  was  reasonable  order. 

The  thing  that  defeats  the  argument  about  there  being  compac¬ 
tion  is  that  there  is  a  very  clean  cutoff  between  events  that  breach 
the  surface  and  those  that  don't.  It's  a  scaled-depth-of-burial 
cutoff,  and  it's  relatively  sharp.  If  you  had  compaction  sometimes, 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters 


267 


it  wouldn't  be  that  well  defined.  Basically  you're  forced  to  believe 
that  bulking  does  occur  every  time,  and  that  the  bulking  actually 
limits  how  far  the  chimney  will  propagate. 

Then  I  tried  the  crater  volumes  and  that  didn't  help.  I  looked 
at  the  crater  radii  to  see  if  there  was  any  correlation  there.  Now, 
the  depth  of  the  crater  will  give  you  a  yield  but  it  may  be  too  high 
or  too  low.  But  there  seems  to  be  compensations  to  the  extent  that 
if  the  depth  is  too  great  for  a  particular  yield  the  radius  of  the  crater 
is  too  small.  And  so,  there  are  skinny  craters  and  there  are  extra 
wide  craters,  but  I  could  correct  the  yield  I  determined  from  the 
depth  with  the  yield  from  the  radius,  which  is  not  so  well  behaved. 

The  craters  that  form  at  some  long  time  after  the  shot,  after 
there  has  been  a  collapse  that  didn’t  reach  the  surface,  and  the  area 
is  presumably  stable,  have  been  a  threat  to  personnel  that  wasn’t 
fully  appreciated  for  some  time. 

Miller:  One  time  we  had  something  that  was  almost  like  what 
happened  up  on  T-tunnel  a  few  years  later,  where  people  got  hurt 
when  it  collapsed.  We  had  an  event  in  Area  2,  and  it  used  to  be  they 
didn't  fence  the  GZ,  and  this  hole  had  no  fence.  We  were  doing 
angle  drilling,  and  we  were  rigging  up  the  post-shot  rig.  Part  of  our 
equipment  were  these  big  blowers  to  suck  air  to  the  cellars  in  case 
we  had  a  release  from  the  drilling.  This  teamster  drove  up  to  the 
location,  and  he's  driving  a  big  rig.  He  drove  all  the  way  to  the  GZ 
almost,  turned  around  to  get  spotted,  and  as  he's  returning  the 
ground  collapsed.  The  float  with  those  blowers  went  into  the  crater. 
Fortunately  it  was  not  a  cookie  cutter;  it  was  a  saucer  shape.  Part 
of  the  tractor  wheels  went  into  the  dirt  where  it  cracked,  and  the 
tractor  couldn't  move.  This  guy  jumped  out  with  his  hard  hat  and 
his  lunch  pail,  and  just  ran  like  hell.  We  took  another  tractor,  or 
dozer  in  there,  and  grabbed  hold  and  pulled  the  whole  thing  out. 
Fortunately  nobody  was  hurt.  It  was  close  though,  very  close.  That 
was  the  event  that  caused  us  to  start  fencing  the  ground  zero  area. 

Keller:  On  the  accident  on  Rainier  Mesa  with  Midas  Myth, 
when  they  dropped  the  trailers  and  some  people  in  the  crater  as  it 
formed,  the  same  order  that  I  had  found  earlier  for  crater  formation 
was  relevant  to  that  event.  Midas  Myth  turned  out  to  have  one  of 
the  smallest  scaled  depth  of  burial  for  events  in  Rainier  Mesa. 


268 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Although  they'd  existed  on  other  events  on  the  Mesa,  craters  had 
not  been  seen,  or  recognized.  They  were  just  so  shallow  that  they 
were  not  noticed. 

Carothers:  Roy,  did  you  ever  do  any  drilling  work  on  Rainier 
Mesa? 

Miller:  Oh  yeah.  There  was  a  shot  in  a  vertical  hole  there 
called  Wineskin,  in  U  1  lx,  in  '69.  That  had  a  surface  collapse.  The 
fact  is,  after  the  collapse  they  had  where  they  dropped  the  trailers 
in  the  crater,  they  said  there  had  never  been  one  on  Rainier  Mesa 
to  collapse  to  the  surface.  Ken  Oswald  took  them  all  up  there  and 
showed  them  that  surface  collapse. 

Keller:  When  you  plotted  those  events  that  had  been  shot  in 
Rainier  Mesa,  and  whose  chimney  heights  were  known,  Midas  Myth 
fit  right  on  a  nice  curve.  The  chimney  height  was  just  right  on  the 
line,  and  the  chimney  height  would  be  above  the  surface,  which 
gives  you  a  crater.  At  the  time,  the  folks  who  thought  the  shots  on 
Rainier  Mesa  never  cratered  were  not  aware  of  the  surveys  that  had 
been  done,  and  that  showed  the  shots  did  crater  a  little  bit.  And  so 
it  was  a  matter  of  not  knowing  what  they  didn't  know.  And  one  did 
not  normally  put  trailers  at  ground  zero.  It  was  an  unfortunate 
incident.  There  is  a  lot  more  order  to  this  data  than  some  people 
are  willing  to  believe,  and  so  within  some  uncertainty  it's  a  very 
useful  way  to  look  at  some  things,  such  as  yield,  or  crater  formation. 

One  thing  that's  evolved  most  recently  out  of  that  is  that  Tom 
Kunkle  and  I  looked  at  large  yields,  and  we  found  that  some  of  the 
crater  volumes  were  larger  than  that  of  the  cavity  inferred  from  the 
measured  cavity  radii.  Of  course,  if  bulking  is  existent  in  every  shot, 
you  can't  have  a  crater  volume  that's  larger  than  the  cavity  volume. 
We  looked  at  that  more  carefully,  and  since  I  believe  they  all  bulk 
and  there's  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  large  yields  ought  to 
compact,  the  cavity  inferred  from  the  crater  dimensions  is  a  simple 
constant  times  W  1  /3rd,  in  radius. 

The  conclusion  you  have  to  come  to  is  that  the  radius  measured 
in  the  downward  direction  is  not  characteristic  of  the  cavity  volume, 
and  that  the  cavity  volume  is  larger  than  that  measurement  would 
suggest.  And  there  are  good  calculational  reasons  to  believe  that. 
There  are  calculations  that  have  been  done  that  show  stress  gradi¬ 
ents,  and  the  refractions  from  the  surface,  tend  to  allow  growth  in 
the  upward  direction.  And  so  it's  in  light  of  that  conviction,  unless 


wm 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters 


269 


you're  real  near  the  surface  and  you  get  a  strong  relief  wave,  and  you 
crater,  that  cavities  really  are  pretty  much  a  constant  times  W  to  the 
l/3rd.  Now,  they  are  occasionally  bigger.  They're  obviously 
bigger,  as  measured,  in  the  southern  area  of  Yucca.  Not  only  is  the 
measured  cavity  radius  larger  in  that  area,  the  craters  are  also  larger, 
which  supports  that  correlation. 

Carothers:  You  can  look  at  the  crater,  and  you  can  do  surveys, 
and  you  can  get  the  dimensions  as  accurately  as  you  care  to  pay  for. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  cavity  radius,  if  there  is  such  a  thing,  is  in 
fact  poorly  known.  They  drill  down,  poke  into  an  uncertain  spot 
where  the  cavity  used  to  be,  and  somebody  picks  a  radius  based  on 
some  level  of  radiation  there.  The  impression  I  get  is  that  no  one 
believes  those  reported  radii  are  very  accurate.  How  did  you  deal 
with  that  when  you  tried  to  compare  the  crater  depths  before  and 
after  the  shot? 

Keller:  I  presumed  that  there  was  uncertainty  in  the  radii,  and 
that  the  crater  volumes  were  known  better  than  the  cavity  radii.  So, 
I  went  back  and  calculated  yields  from  the  crater  dimensions,  and 
there  were  a  few  yields  that  were  way  off.  One  of  them  was 
Bandicoot.  Since  then  they  have  gone  back  and  re-drilled  it,  and 
found  that  the  measured  cavity  radius  is  larger  than  originally 
reported.  There's  also  reason  to  believe  that  the  actual  yield  was 
substantially  higher  than  the  published  yield.  And  so,  those  kinds 
of  things  show  up. 

There  are  a  couple  of  events  where  it's  probably  worth  noticing 
those  differences,  and  one  is  Merlin.  Merlin  is  the  shot  from  which 
the  samples  were  obtained  for  which  ail  material  properties  for 
alluvium  are  based  these  days.  "Merlin  alluvium"  —  you  hear  it  ail 
the  time.  Well,  those  properties  are  deduced  from  a  presumed  yield 
for  Merlin.  I've  never  really  pushed  it,  but  I  suspect  that  the  Merlin 
yield  as  given  isn't  correct  either. 

It  was  like  '67  when  I  first  developed  this  correlation,  and  Bob 
Brownlee  was  excited  about  it,  or  seemed  to  be  anyway.  He  took 
it  to  Charles  Brown  and  said,  "Hey,  here's  a  way  to  measure  yield." 
And  there  were  a  couple  of  folks  who  said,  "That's  just  because  we 
always  bury  shots  at  the  same  scaled  depth,  and  you  use  depth  in 
there,  and  that's  why  you  get  that."  Well,  thats's  not  true.  If  you 
just  knew  the  depth  you  wouldn't  get  nearly  as  good  a  correlation. 
Another  thing  Brown  said  was,  "We  already  have  Hydyne,  we  have 


270 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


rad  chem,  and  we  have  seismic;  what  do  we  need  another  yield 
determination  for?"  That  was  his  response.  Well,  it's  actually 
turned  out  to  be  more  useful  than  that,  but  it  was  interesting  to  hear 
the  logic  that  would  prevail  in  those  circumstances. 

Kunkle:  The  radius  we  measure  from  the  radiochemical  drill 
back  is  developed  by  taking  the  point  where  the  bomb  went  off,  and 
finding  the  geometric  distance  to  where  the  drill  hole  first  found 
radiation.  There  are  a  fair  number  of  assumptions  there.  One  is  that 
the  effective  center  of  the  cavity  is  the  center  of  of  the  explosion. 
Now,  there's  no  reason  to  believe  that  should  be  true.  Another 
assumption  is  that  you  have  a  spherical  cavity.  Based  on  these 
assumptions,  you  can  derive  a  volume. 

Many  of  our  shots,  especially  those  for  a  successful  event,  have 
a  scaled  depth  of  burial  of  perhaps  a  hundred  twenty,  a  hundred 
twenty-five  meters.  Those  in  the  valley  collapse  to  the  surface,  and 
make  very  large,  nice  surface  craters.  I've  always  felt  there  ought 
to  be  a  relationship  between  the  size  of  that  surface  crater,  the 
volume  of  the  surface  crater,  and  the  volume  of  the  cavity.  And  in 
fact  there  is.  This  leads  me  to  believe  that  yes,  in  fact,  by  and  large, 
that  radius  we're  getting  tells  us  something  about  an  actual  radius 
—  that  the  cavity  is  more  or  less  spherical,  and  it's  more  or  less 
centered  on  the  explosion  point. 

Carothers:  You  could  make  the  argument  that  cavities  are 
perhaps  not  spherical  for  a  variety  of  reasons,  but  except  for  a 
certain  number  of  special  cases,  they're  spherical  enough.  These 
one  or  two  meter  wiggles  and  protrusions  in  the  cavity  wall  don't 
amount  to  much.  We  can  average  those  out.  And  so,  while  cavities 
aren't  spherical  as  we  draw  with  our  compass  .  .  . 

Kunkle:  They  may  be  as  you  draw  circles  freehand,  like  many 
of  us  draw  circles.  That  has  been  my  impression  of  how  cavity 
sections  may  be.  Conversely,  I  think  we've  seen  cases,  and  we 
expect  to  see  cases,  where  the  cavities  are  squashed  by  the  geology. 
One  of  the  things  we  seem  to  see,  when  shooting  over  very  hard 
material,  in  a  softer  material,  or  under  a  very  hard  layer  in  a  softer 
layer  is  that  the  cavity  is  either  pushed  down  when  it's  in  the  softer 
material  under  the  hard  layer,  or  squashed  on  the  bottom  as  it  tries 
to  grow  down  through  the  hard  material.  By  and  large,  the  little  data 
we  have  from  our  drill  backs  tends  to  support  these  models.  In  the 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters 


271 


final  stages  of  cavity  growth,  the  material  strength  must  be  deter¬ 
mining  where  that  cavity  stops.  And  so,  in  weaker  materials  the 
cavity  should  be  bigger. 

Carothers:  What  comments  would  you  make  about  craters 
with  respect  to  cavities? 

Kunkle:  Well,  for  events  that  take  place  at  relatively  small 
scaled  depths  of  burial  —  a  hundred  twenty  or  hundred  forty  scaled 
meters  —  the  crater  and  the  depth  of  burial  together  are  a  very  good 
indicator  of  how  big  the  cavity  was  underground. 

I  don't  think  this  is  surprising.  At  least,  it  wasn't  to  me.  One 
would  envision  that  the  size  of  the  crater  ought  to  be  related  to  the 
initial  size  of  the  cavity  and  its  depth  of  burial,  given  the  material 
it's  in,  of  course.  And,  indeed,  this  is  in  fact  the  case.  There  is  an 
excellent  relationship  between  the  yield  of  the  device,  it's  depth  of 
burial,  and  the  depth  and  size  of  the  crater  on  the  surface. 

You'd  have  to  improve  the  rad  chem  yields  for  me  to  do  any 
better  in  tuff,  which  is  a  very  uniform  material.  That  was,  to  me, 
a  rather  surprising  result.  I  didn't  expect  to  find  such  a  good 
regression  relationship.  Now,  in  alluvium,  it  doesn't  work  as  well. 
There  are  evidently  different  types  of  alluvium  we  shoot  in.  More 
or  less,  the  tuffs  in  the  valley  seem,  to  the  bomb,  to  be  tuffs.  And 
of  course,  geologically  there  are  not  large  differences  between  them 
either.  That  gives  a  good  ability  to  deduce  actual  event  yields  from 
observable,  unclassified  aspects,  as  we  have  found. 

Carothers:  Unclassified  aspects  perhaps,  but  I  have  to  know  a 
lot  of  things.  I  have  to  know  the  relationship  exists,  and  then  I  have 
to  know  that  this  shot,  whose  yield  I  want  to  know,  was  fired  in  the 
same  material  and  not  something  else.  I  do  need  to  know  a  number 
of  things  in  order  to  derive  that  yield. 

Kunkle:  Yes.  The  events  I've  been  most  interested  in  are  those 
involving  treaty  compliance  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  kiloton  limit. 
And  so,  the  question  is,  can  I  verify  a  hundred  and  fifty  kilotons 
from  unclassified  information?  After  all,  I  know  the  depth  of  burial. 

I  can  tell  that  from  the  cable  lengths,  although  that  could  be 
disguised.  But  I  could  find  out  the  depth  of  the  hole,  to  find  a 
maximum  depth  of  burial.  I  can  tell  if  there's  a  surface  crater  -  - 
that's  quite  easy  to  know  from  a  satellite  or  other  overhead 
photography. 


272 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Does  this  tell  me  something  about  yield,  if  I  happen  to  know  it 
was  in  a  tuff  unit  in  the  valley?  At  a  hundred  fifty  kilotons,  if  I  shoot 
in  the  valley,  I'm  going  to  be  in  a  tuff  unit,  because  I  need  that  depth 
of  burial  to  successfully  contain  the  device.  Those  are  all  the  things 
I  need  to  know;  it  is  in  a  tuff  unit,  the  depth  of  burial,  did  it  make 
a  surface  crater.  Mostly  I  need  the  depth  of  the  crater,  which  is 
fairly  easy  to  arrive  at  from  overhead  photography.  After  all,  we 
do  it  that  way  now  using  aerial  photographs. 

From  that  information  1  maintain  I  can  get  yields  to  plus  or 
minus  twenty  percent,  which  is  about  the  same  as  the  rad  chem 
people  do.  And,  I  don't  need  to  do  more  than  that.  It's  a  very 
reliable  way,  at  least  to  me  who  believes  in  the  process,  to  verify  the 
yield. 

Carothers:  And  the  reason  that  it  works,  presumably,  is  that 
the  tuff  in  the  valley  is  a  fairly  uniform  material,  and  the  cavities 
therefore  follow  a  fairly  smooth  law. 

Kunkle:  That's  right. 

Carothers:  And  as  they  collapse  to  the  surface,  any  bulking 
from  shot  to  shot  is  very  similar.  So,  since  you  mostly  want  to  know 
the  depth  of  the  crater,  you  must  feel  that's  related  to  the  size  of 
the  cavity.  In  a  sense  you're  using  the  crater  to  infer  a  radius  for 
the  cavity.  That's  what  gives  you  the  yield  in  this  uniform  material, 
in  which  you've  fired  enough  shots  that  you  have  calibrated  it,  in  a 
sense.  Is  that  sort  of  it? 

Kunkle:  That's  it. 

Carothers:  Well,  if  I  went  to  some  different  place,  like  Pahute 
Mesa,  where  this  rock  layer  is  hard  and  that  layer  is  soft,  and  this 
pillow  of  lava  is  here  but  was  not  there,  it  might  be  much  more 
difficult. 

Kunkle:  It's  more  difficult,  but  actually  the  relationship  works 
fairly  well  on  Pahute  Mesa,  adjusted  for  the  Mesa  because  there  are 
harder  rocks  and  smaller  cavities,  and  less  frequency  of  cratering  up 
there.  But  when  I  adjust  for  those  things,  that  is,  do  a  Pahute 
regression,  it  works  quite  well  there. 

Where  it  doesn't  work  well  is  in  the  alluvium.  I  have  to  know 
more  about  the  type  of  alluvium  the  shot  is  in.  We  certainly  see  a 
larger  range  of  densities,  and  water  contents,  and  gas  porosities  in 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters  273 

the  alluviums  than  we  do  through  the  other  geologic  testing  units. 
Of  course,  if  one  knows  that  such  a  relationship  exists,  we  have 
published  enough  declassified  event  yields  to  calibrate  the  relation¬ 
ship. 

Let  me  bring  up  a  side  issue.  In  studying  the  underground 
phenomenology  from  nuclear  detonations,  I  kept  coming  across  this 
group  of  shots  that  were  just  odd.  Nothing  looked  quite  like  it 
should.  It  was  interesting  group.  Then  I  found  out  what  they  were. 
If  you  find  a  particular  kind  of  device,  you  throw  it  out  of  your 
analysis,  because  people  don't  know  very  well  what  the  yield  was. 
It  just  became  clear  to  me  that  those  yields  have  big  uncertainties. 

And  so,  one  of  the  things  that  occasionally  comes  up  in  looking 
at  a  proposed  shot  site  is  that  the  neighboring  experience  may 
include  some  things  that  look  pretty  wild.  There's  a  crater  there 
where  there  shouldn't  have  been  one,  or  there  isn't  one  where  there 
should  have  been,  or  this  K  value  looks  very  strange.  But  when  you 
actually  look  at  them,  there  are  these  particular  devices,  and  I 
usually  just  tend  to  ignore  them.  And  there  are  some  that  are  so  odd 
that  I  just,  when  they  come  up,  gently  dismiss  them  as  much  as  I  can. 
Very  odd  things  happened  on  Alva  and  Marvel.  But  of  course, 
you'd  certainly  expect  them  to  behave  differently  than  other  shots. 

Carothers:  There's  another  class  of  shots  which  ought  to  effect 
the  cavity,  and  thereby  the  crater.  Those  are  the  vertical  pipe  shots. 
Generally  they  collapsed  rather  quickly  compared  to  the  other 
shots.  Do  they  follow  your  curves? 

Kunkle:  We  really  didn't  do  enough  of  those.  There  are  a  half 
a  dozen  or  so,  and  they're  scattered  about.  They're  not  a  very 
uniform  group. 

As  far  as  collapse  times  go,  I've  never  been  able  to  predict 
them,  so  I  can't  say  what  effect  the  pipes  had  on  them.  One  of  the 
last  of  these  we  did  was  Huron  King.  It  was  done  the  summer  I 
showed  up  here.  Everyone  was  very  happy  that  it  took  fifty-nine 
minutes  to  collapse,  because  that  demonstrated  that  the  pipe  must 
have  had  really  no  effect  on  it.  I  suppose  that's  a  good  demonstra¬ 
tion,  but  we  had  a  lot  of  downhole  diagnostics  that  demonstrated  it 
better.  So,  I  became  acquainted  with  that  argument  rather  early  on. 


274 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Collapse  times  are  interesting,  and  they're  interesting  because 
we  can't  predict  them.  For  some  shots  in  alluvium  in  the  valley  there 
are  some  sort  of  general  rules  that  allow  you  to  tell  if  it  is  going  to 
collapse  in  one  hour  or  ten  hours,  but  really  no  more  exactly  than 
that. 

For  shots  in  the  valley  tuffs,  where  we  can  predict  if  it  will 
collapse  to  the  surface,  and  the  general  size  of  the  surface  crater, 
and  a  lot  of  things  about  the  shot,  we  can  not  even  get  a  handle  on 
collapse  times.  When  the  cavity  collapses  seems  nearly  a  random 
process.  Certainly  if  it  happened  in  a  minute  or  two,  that  would  be 
very  unusual,  and  in  fact,  we  haven't  seen  that.  Anywhere  from  one 
to  ten  hours,  well,  okay.  It's  been  interesting  that  we  just  can't  do 
much  better  than  that. 

Carothers:  Do  you  think  the  water  that  is  present  plays  a  strong 
role  in  the  collapse? 

Kunkle:  By  itself,  the  water,  either  by  weight  percent  or  by 
volume  percent  in  the  cavity  region,  that  we  actually  measure, 
seems  to  play  no  particular  role  in  determining  collapse  time.  It 
must  be  the  interaction  of  the  water  with  the  rock.  We  have  shot 
in  relatively  dry  sites  of  four  or  five  or  six  percent,  up  to  relatively 
wet  sites  in  the  high  twenties.  So  there's  some  variation  there,  but 
not  as  much  as  you'd  like  to  have  for  an  experiment  to  see  any 
effects.  But  we  often  see,  comparing  different  shots,  factors  of  ten 
difference  in  collapse  times.  We  see  markedly  different  collapse 
times  from  similar  sites  with  presumably  very  comparable  amounts 
of  water.  I  believe  that  the  water,  or  steam  if  you  like,  must  play 
a  role  in  the  collapse,  but  there's  probably  enough  of  it  always 
present  to  do  whatever  it's  going  to  do. 

Carothers:  Perhaps  that's  the  point.  At  the  Test  Site  you 
rarely  shoot  in  an  area  with  very  diferent  kinds  of  rocks. 

Kunkle:  The  collapse  times,  I  found,  go  hand  in  hand  with 
another  conundrum  I  have,  which  is  predicting  ground  motions. 
Ground  motions  display  a  range  of  characteristics  which  are  under¬ 
standable,  but  not  predictable. 

For  example,  a  class  of  shots  that  has  been  studied  a  lot  is  the 
shots  in  the  valley  in  the  tuff  units.  Usually  they  have  fairly  high 
design  yields.  The  ground  motions  fall  on  log  log  plots  in  a  very  nice 
and  uniform  way  when  you  plot  them  for  maximum  velocity  and 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters 


275 


distance.  But  they're  not  the  same  from  shot  to  shot.  On  some 
shots  the  velocity  falls  off  very  rapidly,  and  they  have  correspond¬ 
ingly  very  high  motions  toward  ground  zero.  On  other  shots  the 
velocity  falls  off  very  slowly,  or  relatively  more  slowly,  with 
distance,  but  they  don't  have  much  velocity  at  surface  ground  zero. 
It's  almost  as  if  there's  an  energy  conservation  that  the  amount  of 
energy  under  the  curve  is  staying  the  same,  but  it's  distribution 
around  surface  ground  zero  can  be  very  different. 

The  puzzling  thing  is  that  we  can't  predict  for  any  particular 
shot  which  of  these  behaviors  is  going  to  show.  The  motion  will  fall 
on  a  well  defined  curve,  but  we  can't  tell  in  advance  what  curve  that 
is,  and  we  can't  relate  the  curve  to  any  of  the  geological  aspects.  In 
particular,  in  our  tuff  pile  location,  which  is  a  very  uniform  section 
of  tuff  geology,  we  have  shot  very  similar  shots  in  very  similar 
settings;  same  device,  same  depth  of  burial,  same  location  in  the 
structure.  If  you  had  to  try  to  repeat  an  event,  you  can't  do  any 
better  than  that.  And  they  have  had  completely  different  ground 
motions.  And,  completely  different  collapse  times. 

And  the  collapse  times  aren't  related  to  the  ground  motions 
either,  by  the  way.  I  thought,  ah  ha,  now  I'll  have  some  way  to 
predict  collapse  times,  but  no,  that  didn't  pan  out.  I  think  that  both 
collapse  times  and  ground  motions  are  sensitive  to  the  detailed 
properties  of  the  close-in  geology,  the  geology  near  the  event  work 
point. 

Carothers:  I  was  about  to  raise  that  issue.  The  shots,  you  say, 
were  just  about  as  similar  as  two  shots  could  be,  in  terms  of  yield  and 
geologic  setting.  Perhaps  so.  Yield,  sure.  On  the  other  hand,  they 
were  probably  a  thousand  of  so  feet  apart.  Maybe  more.  So,  they 
weren't  really  in  the  same  geologic  setting,  except  in  a  general  way. 
The  details  near  the  working  point,  the  inhomogeneities  on  the  scale 
of  the  cavity  size,  you  don't  know. 

Kunkle:  Well,  that's  true.  For  some  things,  like  the  scaled 
cavity  size,  the  inhomogeneities  don't  seem  to  matter  too  much  in 
the  tuff  units.  For  other  things,  such  as  the  collapse  times  or  ground 
motions,  it  seems  to  matter  very  much,  and  in  unpredictable  ways. 
We  don't  measure  enough  to  be  able  to  link  the  downhole  measure¬ 
ments  with  what  we  see  happening  post-shot. 


276  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Carothers:  There  are  people  in  the  containment  community 
who  might  say,  "I  could  believe  that  some  of  the  results  you  see  are 
caused  by  details  of  the  structure  which  you  guys  have  never  seen. 
And  you've  never  seen  those  details  because  you  don't  care  about 
them,  because  they  don't  affect  the  containment  of  your  shots. 
However,  you  see  the  effects  when  you  sit  down  and  try  to  calculate 
certain  things.  Some  of  that  detail  could  be  things  such  as  the 
motion  of  blocks  that  distribute  the  energy  in  different  ways  on 
different  shots.  Even  though  the  shot  points,  by  your  logs  and 
samples,  look  the  same,  they're  not  the  same.  The  blocks  aren't  the 
same." 

Kunkle:  I  certainly  believe  that  block  motion  has  an  effect.  By 
the  way,  there  is  a  weak  correlation  between  the  joint  frequency  we 
see  in  holes  and  the  collapse  times.  And  the  joint  frequency  tends 
to  increase  as  you  move  toward  the  margins  of  the  valley,  from  the 
center,  and  collapse  times  decrease  as  you  move  out  towards  the 
margins  of  the  valley  from  the  center.  Maybe  if  you  have  more 
joints  the  blocks  at  the  keystone  are  smaller,  and  then  they're  not 
as  competent  when  it  comes  time  to  hold  the  cavity  up.  Whatever, 
there  does  seem  to  be  some  correlation. 

I  think  the  exact  positioning  of  layers,  and  the  impedance 
between  the  various  layers  in  the  bedded  tuffs  plays  a  part. 
Calculationally  you  see  this.  Calculated  ground  motions  and 
residual  stresses  are  very  sensitive  to  even  small  variations  in  the 
layer  properties  you  use  -  -  their  thicknesses,  their  positioning.  We 
found  this  out  on  an  analysis  of  the  Cottage  event,  for  example.  The 
standard  model  was  very  sensitive  to  small  variations,  and  we've 
seen  this  in  other  shots  we've  tried  to  calculate.  So,  the  actual 
details  of  the  geology  often  seem  to  matter.  Fortunately,  not  for  a 
lot  of  the  containment  aspects. 

Carothers:  Not  for  the  containment  aspects  of  the  kind  of 
events  that  you  do.  If  your  Laboratory  said  it  was  necessary  to  fire 
an  event  which  had  a  line-of-sight  to  the  surface,  then  some  of  these 
things  could  possibly  become  important.  But  for  the  kinds  of  events 
that  Livermore  and  Los  Alamos  do  these  days,  simple  emplacement 
hole  shots  at  a  conservative  depth  of  burial,  they  obviously  aren't 
important  to  the  containment  aspects  of  the  shot. 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters 


277 


Kunkle:  No.  Now,  we  may  see  some  of  these  effects  reflected 
in  some  of  our  containment  statistics.  What  I  mean  by  some  of  them 
is  the  effects  of  block  motions.  This  is  an  argument  that  Carl  Keller 
has  made,  and  I  find  it  quite  persuasive.  You  can  imagine  our 
emplacement  hole  as  actually  the  narrowest  of  soda  straws.  It's  a 
pencil  line  when  drawn  to  actual  size  on  cross  sections.  And  one 
phenomenon  that  probably  happens  on  higher  yield  shots  is  block 
motion  which  is  large  enough  to  simply  shear  off  the  pencil  line. 
There  is  then  no  longer  a  line  running  down  to  the  cavity. 

You  could  say  that  somewhere  around  fifteen  or  twenty 
kilotons  we  technically  get  block  motions  large  enough  to  shear  and 
very  effectively  block  off  those  stemming  columns.  That  may  be  a 
key  to  containing  larger  yield  events.  That's  one  of  the  reasons  they 
may  be  easier  to  contain;  the  ground  motions,  the  chaotic  block 
motions  close  in  may  tend  to  slide  the  earth  around  and  seal  off  the 
stemming  columns. 

So,  the  cavity  sizes  and  crater  dimensions  fit  nicely  in  a  family. 
From  that  you  can  assume,  or  infer,  what  may  be  happening  in  the 
ground.  The  crater  size  must  be  reduced  somewhat  from  the  cavity 
volume,  because  of  bulking  of  the  earth  materials.  You  can  work  out 
a  bulking  factor  by  calculating  the  cavity  size  and  the  crater  volume, 
and  looking  at  the  difference  in  volumes.  Now,  we  can  work  out  a 
bulking  factor  in  the  tuff  that  is  seven  or  eight  percent,  but  we  can't 
a-priori  know  that.  I  can't  work  that  out  from  the  mechanical 
models,  or  the  physical  measurements  on  the  tuff  itself.  It's 
something  we  simply  observe. 

And  then  there's  the  ground  motion.  We  observe  the  ground 
motions  and  they're  understandable.  That  is,  when  a  new  shot  is 
done,  you  look  at  the  ground  motion  data.  It's  understandable  in 
the  context  of  the  other  shots,  but  it's  not  predictable  in  advance. 

Carothers:  When  you  talk  about  bulking  factors,  there's  the 
question  of  how  the  collapse  occurs.  Is  it  a  rain  of  little  pebbles,  or 
a  massive  chunk  of  material  that  moves  down  as  a  unit.  What  do 
you  think  it  is?  Or  what  evidence  is  there  for  it  being  one  or  the 
other? 

Kunkle:  The  only  evidence  I'm  aware  of  is  from  drill  backs  and 
reentries  on  Rainier  Mesa.  There  are  downhole  movies,  and  holes 
drilled  in  chimneys,  which  show  perceptible  large  gaps  between  the 
various  blocks,  most  of  the  way  down. 


278 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


But  this  is,  of  course,  a  limited  set  of  experience.  We 
occasionally  will  drill  through  the  edge  of  a  chimney,  or  collapsed 
area,  during  the  post-shot  operation.  You  commonly  lose  circula¬ 
tion  when  you  reach  that  region.  That  indicates  you've  reached 
some  kind  of  fractured  area,  but  we  know  little  of  the  mechanical 
properties  of  the  chimney  material,  such  as  the  rubble  sizes,  and  the 
spacing  between  the  pieces. 

Weart:  We  did  some  measurements  during  the  Marshmallow 
reentry  to  see  how  large  the  cavity  was,  how  far  out  it  had  grown. 
To  do  that  we  mined  in  until  we  intercepted  the  edge.  We  followed 
certain  bedding  planes  that  existed  in  the  tuff,  and  all  of  a  sudden 
we  came  to  an  area  where,  although  it  was  still  perfectly  solid  rock, 
it  was  disrupted.  As  we  continued  to  mine  in  it  was  clear  that  what 
we  were  now  in  was  a  jumble  of  tuff,  and  it  was  not  characteristic 
of  the  the  material  we  had  been  following. 

Carothers:  You  couldn't  tell  from  the  mining  itself  that  you 
had  entered  the  cavity  region?  You  were  still  mining  in  solid, 
competent  rock? 

Weart:  Yes.  It  required  no  additional  support  over  and  above 
what  we  had  used  out  in  the  rest  of  the  drift.  It  was  tightly 
compacted  material.  I  think  a  lot  of  people  have  the  picture  that 
when  the  cavity  collapses  there  is  a  rain  of  rocks  of  various  sizes,  and 
there  is  a  pile  of  unconsolidated  material  that  makes  up  the 
chimney. 

That  was  not  our  experience  at  the  working  point  depth.  Right 
at  the  cavity  boundary  it  was  tightly  compacted  material.  We  could 
find  evidence  as  we  mined  in  of  fractures  that  had  developed  outside 
this  cavity  radius.  They  had  had  molten  material  injected  in  them. 
It  was  usually  radioactive,  but  not  necessarily  so.  There  wasn't  any 
indication  at  all  of  radioactivity  at  the  boundary  of  the  native  rock 
and  the  cavity. 

We  did  contact  the  cavity  on  more  than  one  radius.  I  don't 
recall  if  we  mined  straight  through.  We  might  have.  We  did  try  to 
determine  the  radius  on  the  horizontal  plane,  and  it  wasn't  perfectly 
spherical.  And  subsequent  shots,  like  Gum  Drop,  were  not  per¬ 
fectly  spherical  either. 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters 


279 


Flangas:  When  we  reentered  the  Pile  Driver  cavity,  up  until  we 
hit  the  cavity  wall  there  was  nothing  to  indicate  there  was  anything 
beyond.  There  was  a  clean  interface,  and  within  a  matter  of  inches 
we  were  into  the  cavity.  Now,  we've  had  others  where  we  see  the 
ground  get  more  and  more  fractured,  and  more  and  more  ravelly, 
fifteen,  twenty  feet  away  from  the  cavity  wall.  That's  in  the  tuffs 
more.  But  we've  seen  them  both  ways.  Ground  is  not  homoge¬ 
neous,  it's  not  consistent. 

Carothers:  It  sure  took  us  a  long  time  to  learn  that.  Why  didn't 
you  explain  that  to  us  sooner? 

Flangas:  Nobody  asked  me.  My  job  was  digging  them,  not 
figuring  them  out. 

As  far  as  chimneys  go,  on  Rainier  we  drove  a  raise  up  to  get 
about  a  hundred  feet  above  the  shot  horizon,  and  that's  where  we 
ran  into  the  material  that  was  just  powdered.  It  was  just  totally 
disagreggated.  It  was  like  working  through  flour.  Then  we  used  a 
technique  they  call  spiling,  in  order  to  get  that  drift  across.  We 
wanted  to  drift  across  the  cavity  and  get  directly  over  the  ground 
zero. 

Carothers:  What's  spiling? 

Flangas:  Spiling.  Spiling  is  a  roof  support  system  that  is  used 
in  very  loose  or  blocky  ground.  Pointed  (chisel  shaped)  wood  (4" 
x  6")  or  sometimes  metal  beams  are  angled  and  driven  upward  and 
outward  over  the  leading  set  with  the  back  end  braced  over  the 
preceding  set.  This  cantilever  bracing  supports  an  incompetant  roof 
ahead  of  the  last  set  and  keeps  the  miners  safely  under  cover  while 
advancing  the  heading.  So,  as  we  spiled  across  there  we  noticed  that 
material  was  totally  disaggregatted.  And  from  my  experience  in 
block  caving,  that  was  a  block  caver's  dream.  We  could  have  pulled 
rock  out  of  there  from  now  on. 

There's  a  lot  of  material  in  that 
chimney. 

Carothers:  Tom,  there  has 
been  the  picture  some  people  have 
presented  of  a  continual  process  of 
decrepitation  going  on  before  cav¬ 
ity  collapse.  There's  the  heat  in 
the  cavity,  it  heats  up  a  layer  of 


280 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


rock,  turns  the  water  it  contains  to  steam,  which  then  blows  off  that 
layer  of  rock,  and  so  on.  So,  the  cavity  walls  are  continually  flaking 
off. 

Kunkle:  I  would  expect  such  pieces  of  rock  to  be  quite  small 
compared  to  the  major  blocks  that  would  fall  in  during  cavity 
collapse.  And,  by  and  large,  the  cooling  that  occurs  is  from  the 
energy  that  is  transported  into  the  rock  to  make  it  hot.  The 
conditions  near  the  wall  of  an  underground  cavity,  following  a 
nuclear  explosion,  must  be  quite  suitable  for  steam  vapor  explosions 
to  occur.  The  rock  and  the  water  in  the  cavity  are  under  a  large 
pressure.  The  water  in  the  rock  can  now  be  superheated,  probably, 
to  appreciable  temperatures  before  it  will  flash  to  steam.  At  those 
high  temperatures,  the  flash  of  the  superheated  water  to  vapor  can 
have  an  energy  release  comparable  to  a  good  high  explosive.  But 
the  energy  has  already  gone  into  it,  by  thermal  conductivity,  and  so 
it  is  already  hot  steam  and  water  and  rock,  being  added  back  to  the 
cavity.  The  work's  already  been  done,  other  than  the  mechanical 
work,  which  is  soaked  up. 

But  I  think  those  pieces  must  be  small.  You're  looking  at  an 
average  size  of  a  pocket,  even  the  big  ones  maybe,  of  a  few 
millimeters  across.  So,  you  can  imagine  a  little  droplet  of  high 
explosive  detonating  just  inside  the  wall,  and  scaling  off  some  small 
amount  of  rock.  I  think  this  is  unlikely  to  contribute  to  the  major 
collapse. 

Now,  there  has  been  a  school  of  thought  that  believes  that  the 
cavity  pressure  is  related  to  the  collapse  time.  The  model  seems  to 
be  that  of  an  impermeable  membrane,  which  allows  you  to  push 
against  the  rock.  I've  thought  that  a  mechanism  that  may  be  more 
important  in  determining  when  cavities  collapse  than  the  steam 
pressure  inside  the  cavity  is  the  stress  in  the  rock  around  the  cavity. 
If  our  calculational  models  are  to  be  believed,  we  often  reach  stress 
states  in  the  rock  immediately  surrounding  the  cavity  of  compres¬ 
sive  stress;  the  residual  stress  we  like  to  talk  about.  That's  also 
expected  to  dissipate,  as  water  moves  out  of  pores  and  relieves  that, 
and  collapse  times  may  be  more  related  to  the  migration  of  the 
water  out  of  the  combined  pore  spaces  than  to  the  actual  pressure 
decay  in  the  cavity.  The  two  may  go  hand-in-hand,  but  we  know 
very  little  about  any  of  these  mechanisms. 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters 


281 


Carothers:  When  the  cavity  does  collapse,  whatever  gases 
there  are  in  the  cavity  have  to  go  somewhere.  The  steam  can  be 
condensed  by  the  cold  material  that  falls  in.  There  is  presumably 
only  a  small  volume  of  other  gases,  so  there  ought  to  be  a  low 
pressure  in  any  volume  that  remains.  You  might  think  there  would 
be  flow  from  the  surface  down  into  the  chimney  until  that  volume 
is  filled  up. 

Kunkle:  That's  indeed  seen  in  apical  voids.  It's  not  unusual, 
in  a  subsurface  collapse  that  extends  a  fair  distance  up  the  hole,  to 
have  a  containment  diagnostic  package  survive  in  the  stemming 
above.  That  package  comes  into  communication,  through  the 
stemming  materials,  with  the  apical  void.  For  example,  on  the 
Barnwell  event,  some  of  the  upper  pressure  transducers  showed  a 
declining  pressure  soon  after  the  major  collapse,  as  they  came  into 
communication  with  the  reduced  pressure  in  the  apical  void. 

On  Rivoli  there  was  a  measurement  just  under  the  topmost 
plug  which  showed  the  pressure  decreasing,  presumably  as  it  came 
into  equilibration  with  pressure  in  the  apical  void  at  the  top  of  the 
rubble  column.  So  this,  indeed,  does  seem  to  occur. 

I  have  heard  rumors  through  the  years,  but  I've  never  seen 
written  documentation,  that  when  you  drill  back  into  standing 
cavities,  they  have  sub-atmospheric  pressure  in  them.  I'm  pretty 
sure  we've  had,  at  Los  Alamos,  events  in  Yucca  Flat  where  we've 
drilled  back  into  standing  cavities  where  there  were  pressures  below 
atmospheric.  They  subsequently  collapsed.  To  my  knowledge  there 
are  no  standing  cavities  at  the  Nevada  Test  Site. 

Brownlee:  Los  Alamos  had  at  least  three,  and  I  don't  mean  that 
there  might  not  have  been  four,  shots  in  which  we  did  a  very  low 
yield  in  saturated  tuff.  For  us  that's  unusual,  because  low  yields 
would  normally  be  done  in  alluvium.  These  happened  to  be  in 
saturated  tuff. 

One  time  the  guys  came  to  me  terribly  excited  because  they'd 
had  this  low  yield  in  saturated  tuff,  and  they  said,  "When  we  drilled 
back,  we  hit  the  cavity,  and  the  fans  that  do  the  ventilating  were 
running  backwards.  All  the  air  was  going  into  the  shaft;  all  of  a 
sudden  the  cavity  was  just  sucking  air.  How  could  that  possibly  be?" 
So  I  said,  "The  next  time  that  happens,  make  sure  you  estimate  how 


282 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


much  air  goes  in."  We  had  three  shots  for  which  we  measured  the 
flow  of  air  into  those  cavities,  and  what  we  found,  of  course,  was 
that  the  amount  of  air  that  went  in  was  the  volume  of  the  cavity. 

So,  we  had  a  standing  cavity  with  a  vacuum.  What  you 
immediately  deduce  is  that  the  cavity  was  small,  and  in  tuff,  so  it 
stood.  It  didn't  fall  in.  But  it  was  sealed  off,  and  this  told  us  a  lot 
about  gas  flow  through  tuff,  and  how  things  could  seal. 

Carothers:  Subsurface  collapses,  by  definition,  go  part  of  the 
way  to  the  surface,  and  when  they  stop,  there  seems  always  to  be 
an  apical  void  above  the  chimney  material.  If  that  void  is  at  low 
pressure,  the  flow  will  be  downward  from  the  surface  to  fill  up  this 
big  vacuum  chamber.  That  is  a  mechanism  which  would  tend  to 
militate  against  any  release  of  gases  that  might  have  gotten  up  that 
high.  Do  you  believe  that's  possible,  John? 

Rambo:  I  like  that  idea.  We  saw  that  happen  on  Barnwell, 
certainly.  The  pressure  dropped,  and  you  could  see  that  on  the 
downhole  gauges.  The  subsurface  collapse  tended  to  draw  a 
vacuum,  and  we  didn't  see  any  radiation  get  above  where  it  was 
measured  at  the  stemming  platform,  which  was  very  high  in  the 
hole,  about  four  hundred  meters  up.  And  so,  I  think  that  downward 
flow  certainly  does  happen. 

There  were  a  set  of  experiments  carried  out  by  Ed  Peterson,  of 
S-Cubed,  sponsored  by  DNA,  which  had  to  do  with  whether  there 
was  any  containment  threat  if  a  shot  site  was  situated  close  to  the 
chimney  of  a  previous  event.  Data  was  sought  as  to  whether  or  not 
there  might  be  flow  of  gas  through  the  old  chimney  to  the  surface. 

Peterson:  At  the  time  we  did  the  chimney  pressuriztion 
measurements  there  were  a  couple  of  things  that  were  coming  up. 
One  was  that  they  were  going  to  shoot  Hybla  Gold  near  a  nuclear 
chimney,  and  they  were  worried  about,  if  they  got  gases  from  the 
shot  into  the  chimney,  would  they  then  leak  up  to  the  surface  very 
rapidly.  If  you  place  events  reasonably  close  together,  and  if  you 
get  rapid  gas  flow  into  an  old  chimney,  could  those  gases  end  up 
going  up  to  the  surface  rapidly?  That  was  the  motivation.  It  was 
a  pretty  much  a  containment-type  question. 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters  283 

Carothers:  Wouldn't  it  be  reasonable  for  me  to  ask,  "Why 
would  you  be  concerned  about  gases  going  up  an  old  collapse 
chimney?  After  all,  there  was  a  shot  there,  the  chimney  formed, 
and  gases  didn't  go  up  it  from  the  original  shot.  Why  would  it  do 
that  from  another  shot? 

Peterson:  That  is  an  extremely  legitimate  question.  And  it  is 
probably  correct  that  if  there  were  another  shot,  and  it  didn't 
collapse,  then  there  would  be  all  the  steam  in  the  cavity,  and  there 
would  be  a  horrendous  drive  because  of  the  steam  pushing  all  the 
noncondensables  Then  you  could  make  the  argument,  just  as  you 
did,  that  the  steam  is  going  to  condense  in  the  old  chimney,  because 
the  first  one  didn't  leak  either.  What  you  say  is  true. 

I  don't  know  all  the  motivations  for  those  measurements,  but 
I  think  we  are  now  in  a  world  in  which  not  everybody  who  looks  at 
the  problem  understands  all  the  details  of  what  goes  on.  So,  if  you 
do  a  test  and  measure  something,  and  say,  "Okay,  we  did  the  test 
and  measured  it.  And  so,  now  that  we've  measured  it,  we  sort  of 
know  what  happens,"  it  makes  it  much  more  believable  to  a  large 
portion  of  the  community. 

Carothers:  I  believe  that.  What  kinds  of  things  did  you  do? 

Peterson:  The  thing  we  did  on  those  tests  was,  we  injected  air 
slightly  above  the  working  point  level  through  a  drill  hole.  They 
drilled  a  slant  hole  going  up  at  fifteen  degrees,  from  one  of  the 
underground  drifts,  and  came  into  the  chimney  some  fifty  to  a 
hundred  feet  above  the  working  point.  Through  this  hole  we 
injected  air,  plus  a  tracer  such  as  sulfur  hexafluoride.  Then  we 
measured  the  pressure  through  a  drill  hole  that  was  drilled  from  the 
surface  down  to  the  top  of  the  chimney.  We  also  measured  the 
pressure  in  another  drill  hole  that  came  in  horizontally.  That  one 
went  in  near  where  the  working  point  originally  was.  In  all  three  of 
those  holes  we  could  measure  pressure,  and  tracer  gas  concentra¬ 
tion.  We  also,  on  the  surface,  put  out  three  circular  arrays  so  we 
could  take  air  samples  every  thirty  degrees  around  the  surface 
ground  zero.  Those  we  could  analyze  for  the  tracers. 

Basically  we  maintained  a  constant  flow  rate,  and  looked  at  the 
pressure  response  as  a  function  of  time.  On  most  of  our  chimney 
tests  I  believe  we  were  flowing  gas  in  at  about  three  thousand  cubic 


284  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

feet  per  minute.  It  was  between  one  and  three  thousand,  some¬ 
where  around  that.  Eventually,  after  twenty  hours  or  so,  we  could 
build  up  the  pressure  in  the  chimney  to  maybe  three,  four,  five  psi. 

We  put  in  numbers  of  millions  of  cubic  feet  of  gas.  You  can 
model  it,  and  we  found  we  could  model  itvery  well.  From  the  model 
we  could  calculate  what  would  happen  if  we  let  the  pressure  decay, 
and  built  it  up  again,  and  so  forth.  So,  we  got  to  the  point  where 
we  thought  we  could  understand  reasonably  well  the  conditions  in 
the  chimney.  We  did  three  chimneys,  and  I  think  we  did  seven  tests 
on  those  three  chimneys,  which  were  from  Dining  Car,  Ming  Blade, 
and  Mighty  Epic. 

I  believe  some  of  the  motivation  for  using  the  Mighty  Epic 
chimney  was  because  Diablo  Hawk  was  going  to  be  done  in  that 
general  vicinity.  I  think  we  verified,  if  nothing  else,  that  gas  doesn't 
come  up  to  the  surface  from  those  chimneys. 

Carothers:  Is  that  because,  although  the  chimney  may  have  a 
lot  of  cracks,  and  the  gas  goes  up  to  the  top  of  the  chimney,  there 
is  then  some  amount  of  material  from  the  top  of  the  chimney  to  the 
surface  of  the  Mesa,  and  that's  what's  really  keeping  the  gas  in? 

Peterson:  Yes,  one  can  make  that  argument.  I  believe  it  was 
on  Dining  Car  where,  when  we  did  our  first  test,  we  actually 
detected  gases  up  on  the  Mesa  at  positions  that  were  probably  on 
the  order  of  two  orthree  hundred  feet  from  the  surface  ground  zero. 
Subsequently,  after  the  USGS  came  out  and  looked  at  it,  they  found 
a  region  there  that  was  fractured.  The  fractures  went  down  at  about 
a  thirty  degree  angle,  and  would  intersect  the  uncased  bore  hole  that 
went  down  into  the  top  of  the  chimney.  Subsequently  that  bore 
hole  was  cased,  and  we  did  another  test.  Nothing  came  up  to  the 
surface. 

So,  in  that  case  we  really  made  the  right  guess  —  the  material 
above  the  chimney  was  what  kept  the  gas  in.  I  can't  remember  the 
exact  numbers,  but  we  probably  put  in  two  to  four  million  cubic  feet 
of  gas,  and  our  guess  is  that  at  the  most,  even  when  we  detected  it, 
maybe  less  than  a  hundred  cubic  feet  had  come  out  on  the  Mesa. 
The  tracers  are  very  sensitive,  to  one  part  to  ten  to  the  twelfth. 

If  we  had  been  testing  over  a  chimney  that  was  in  alluvium, 
where  you  wouldn't  necessarily  get  the  flow  through  the  fractures, 
we  would  then  have  put  some  type  of  a  tarp  on  the  surface,  and 
collected  the  gas  under  it.  That  way.  if  it  does  ooze  up  over  a  large 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters 


285 


region,  you  can  still  pick  it  up.  I  think  that  what  we  showed  was  that 
there  was  no  gross  flow.  These  slight  oozings  —  I  don't  think  one 
can  tell.  But  I  think  the  amounts  would  be  so  small  that  it  would  be 
almost  impossible  to  detect,  no  matter  what  it  was  that  was  oozing 
up  at  that  rate. 

Carothers:  The  conclusion  that  I  would  arrive  at  is  that  indeed 
i  can  safely  detonate  a  device  quite  close  to  an  old  chimney,  because 
it  is  no  more  of  a  flow  path  than  the  new  chimney  that's  going  to 
form. 

Peterson:  I  think  that's  true.  If  you're  looking  purely  at  the 
fluid  flow  aspects  of  it,  what  you  say  it  true. 

Carothers:  How  else  should  I  look  at  it? 

Peterson:  Well,  because  DNA  has  a  line-of-sight,  and  ground 
shock  closures,  and  things  like  that  on  the  tunnel  events,  if  you  do 
put  another  shot  too  close  to  an  old  chimney,  you  may  affect  the 
ground  motion  in  a  manner  that  might  adversely  affect  some  other 
part  of  the  system. 

Carothers:  You're  implying  that  the  properties  of  the  chim¬ 
ney,  of  this  material  which  has  fallen  in,  are  different  from  the 
surrounding  materials,  and  so  you  can't  treat  it  as  similar  to,  or  the 
same  as  the  rest  of  medium? 

Peterson:  That's  true.  It  may  be  a  perturbation  to  the  ground 
motion.  But  I  think  from  the  fluid  flow  and  leakage  point  of  view 
what  you  say  it  very  true. 

Carothers:  Do  you  think  that  would  be  true  in  alluvium  as  well? 

Peterson:  I  think  so.  I  see  no  reason  why  it  wouldn't  be.  On 
Pahute,  Livermore  has  done  shots  where  they  get  some  collapse,  or 
partial  collapse,  and  there  are  little  fractures  that  ooze  small 
amounts  of  activity  from  atmospheric  pumping.  But  they  are  very 
small  amounts.  The  thing  is,  you  can  count  anything,  Jim.  It's  like 
our  sulfer  hexafluoride  —  there  are  just  molecules  that  came  out. 
With  the  measurement  capabilities  that  people  have  today  you  can 
measure  far  below  anything  the  EPA  says  is  significant  for  anything, 
or  that  anyone  else  says  is  significant.  You  can  measure  molecules 
of  anything,  like  our  tracer.  And  there  are  a  lot  of  molecules.  It's 


286 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


true  that  Caesar's  last  breath  is  still  floating  around,  and  every 
breath  you  draw  in  should  have  a  molecule  or  two  of  Caesar's  last 
breath.  One  can  mathematically  show  it. 

Carothers:  Carl,  the  Test  Site,  including  the  tunnels,  is  used 
as  a  two  dimensional  grid,  as  far  as  siting  events  goes,  and  there  are 
some  arbitrary  rules  about  how  far  from  an  old  chimney  a  new  event 
should  be  located.  Eventually,  perhaps,  for  various  reasons,  people 
could  be  forced  locate  events  closer  than  those  rules  would  allow. 
My  impression  is  that  nobody  really  knows  very  much  about  what 
the  properties  of  the  chimneys  are,  and  so  they  stay  away  from  them 
because  they  don't  know. 

Keller:  That's  right. 

Carothers:  Do  you  think  that  could  become  an  issue  in  the 
future? 

Keller:  I  think  that  if  there  were  a  few  measurements  of 
chimney  permeabilities,  and  measurements  outside  those  same 
chimneys,  to  develop  real  data  on  what  the  relative  permeability  is, 
inside  versus  outside,  then  you  could  be  much  more  quantitative 
about  how  close  you  could  get.  The  gas  flow  codes  we  have  now 
would  easily  handle  that  problem.  There  are  some  kinds  of  sitings 
that  are  already  all  right.  You  can  shoot,  certainly,  well  underneath. 

I  don'tsee  anything  wrongwith  dropping  one  chimney  into  another. 

Carothers:  No,  I  don't  either.  No  one  has  done  it  though. 

Keller:  No.  Well,  they've  gotten  close.  But  I  think  in  that  case 
you  don't  have  to  be  very  quantitative  to  convince  yourself  it's  all 
right. 

The  thing  that  I  think  is  most  compelling  for  the  measurement 
of  permeabilities  in  the  chimneys  is  the  C02  question.  As  they  site 
in  different  areas,  and  they  encounter  higher  C02  contents,  they 
will  have  to  be  more  explicit  about  what  is  an  acceptable  level.  The 
standard  five  percent  that  has  been  the  threshold  of  concern  is  based 
on  an  analysis  of  seeps,  which  occurred  all  over  the  site  and  includes 
events  like  Diagonal  Line  and  a  bunch  of  Livermore  shots.  There's 
a  whole  area  which  Livermore  uses  that  has  a  high  C02  content.  It's 
also  fairly  well  cemented.  It's  very  important  that  the  threshold  of 
concern  for  C02  is  very  medium  dependent.  If  you're  shooting  in 
a  material  where  the  chimney  is  not  significantly  different  from  the 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters  287 

native  material  in  permeability,  you  can  go  to  very  high  levels  of 
C02.  And  in  fact,  some  events  were  shot  in  carbonate  rock;  Nash, 
and  Bourbon,  and  Handcar. 

Carothers:  Nash  also  leaked. 

Keller:  Yes,  but  Bourbon  didn't,  and  so  you  wonder  why. 
Well,  Bourbon  was  deep  enough.  Seeps  depend  on  the  path,  and  if 
it's  long  enough,  it  can  even  be  fairly  permeable.  Jack  House  paid 
for  some  work  on  the  relationship  of  C02  and  medium  properties 
to  leaks,  and  that  will  be  very  useful  for  him  if  permeability 
measurements  are  made.  Now,  as  1  have  said,  you  can  infer 
permeabilities  from  the  leak  arrival  times,  but  that  assumes  you 
know  what  the  C02  generation  is,  and  that's  kind  of  a  flaky  number. 
There  are  the  arguments  about  whether  cuttings  or  sidewall  samples 
give  you  a  good  number,  and  how  you  should  average,  and  so  on. 
So  one  doesn't  know  the  inventory  very  well. 

Carothers:  Russ,  you  have  said  that  there  are  indications  that 
things  other  than  the  simple  movement  of  gases  from  the  detonation 
through  the  chimney  toward  the  surface  go  on  in  the  chimney  after 
the  shot. 

Duff:  When  the  early  Plowshare  activity  in  S-Cubed  came 
along,  I  had  an  opportunity  on  Gasbuggy  to  look  at  the  chemistry 
of  a  nuclear  chimney.  We  had  extensive  measurements  of  gas 
composition  over  time,  after  the  shot.  Chuck  Smith,  at  Livermore, 
did  measurements  not  only  on  the  composition  of  the  gas  -  -  carbon 
dioxide  and  air  and  methane  and  ethane,  and  so  forth  -  -  he  also 
looked  at  HD,  HT,  H2,  HTO.  So,  we  had  not  only  chemistry,  we 
had  isotopic  chemistry.  I  tried  to  develop  for  El  Paso  Natural  Gas, 
who  were  the  commercial  partner,  a  model  which  would  explain  all 
of  those  measurements  in  a  consistent  fashion.  I  think  we  did,  and 
it  is  a  very  different  model  from  what  the  Laboratory  developed. 

One  thing  that  came  out  of  it  was  the  postulate  that  during 
collapse  some  of  the  hot  rock  was  elevated,  or  at  least  not  flooded 
by  the  condensate.  So,  over  a  period  of  six  months  there  was  a 
continuing  series  of  reactions  at  these  hot  rock  surfaces  between  the 
various  chemical  species.  There  must  have  been  hot  spots  in  the 
chimney,  and  by  hot  I  mean  six,  seven,  eight  hundred  degrees 
Kelvin,  that  lasted  for  six  months. 

Carothers:  That's  not  the  conventional  wisdom. 


288 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Duff:  Of  course  it  is  not.  But  you  look  at  all  the  chemical 
evidence,  and  ask,  "How  can  you  explain  that?"  Weil,  I  could 
explain  it  by  a  series  of  assumptions,  and  continuing  reactions  were 
required.  So  far  as  I  know  nobody  else  has  tried  to  explain  why  the 
chemistry  changed  over  six  months.  But  it  did.  That  was  my  first 
effort  to  apply  concepts  of  equilibrium  chemistry  to  the  nuclear 
explosion  environment. 

In  the  DNA  program  there  have  been  a  number  of  places  where 
chemical  concerns  might  be  important.  We  have  long  seen  explo¬ 
sive  gases  in  the  tunnel  after  the  shot.  Where  do  they  come  from? 

Carothers:  Joe  LaComb  recently  said  they  were  finding 
hydrogen  during  their  reentry,  but  it's  clean,  so  it  doesn't  come 
from  the  cavity. 

Duff:  Weil,  I  haven't  thought  it  came  from  the  cavity  for  a  long 
time.  I've  been  promoting  for  four  or  five  years  the  idea  that  DNA 
was  seeing  the  effects  of  reactions  between  grout  and  metal,  making 
hydrogen.  Since  the  grout,  in  particular  superlean  grout,  is  made 
with  desert  fines,  there  is  carbonate  in  it.  There  have  been  a  lot  of 
chemical  calculations  which  have  been  done,  and  reported,  which 
can  explain  the  presence  of  a  lot  of  carbon  monoxide,  and  little 
carbon  dioxide.  In  the  cavities  we're  dealing  with  there  should  be 
a  lot  of  carbon  dioxide.  The  stuff  that  shows  up  in  the  tunnels  is 
carbon  monoxide,  and  right  there  is  evidence  that  it  is  not  cavity 
gas. 

There  is  some  radioactivity  in  these  gases,  and  I  think  that 
represents  fission  products  that  get  into  the  very  early  prompt  flow. 
They  get  mixed  into  the  stemming,  and  then  are  purged  out  of  the 
stemming  by  late-time  reactions  which  make  hydrogen  and  carbon 
monoxide,  which  then  seep  into  the  tunnel  complex.  That  was 
behind  my  suggestions  a  couple  of  years  ago  of  putting  some 
manganese  dioxide  into  the  system  to  try  to  control  the  late-time 
reactions. 

Carothers:  I  recall  that  Livermore  put  manganese  dioxide 
around  the  device  canister  on  a  few  shots  in  the  sixties. 

Duff:  Jade  is  one.  It  was  done  in  a  radiochemical  context. 
They  were  trying  to  modify  the  oxidation  states  of  certain  fission 
product  oxides  so  the  radiochemical  collection  process  would  be 


Cavity  Collapse,  Chimneys  and  Craters  289 

better.  Before  that  work  came  to  any  particular  fruition,  as  I 
understand  it  other  chemical  techniques  were  developed  and  it  was 
dropped. 

I've  been  talking  to  ]oe  LaComb  and  various  other  people 
about  chemical  related  activities.  Bob  Bass  was  receptive,  and  he 
got  Sandia  to  make  some  gas  sampling  systems.  They  have  been 
fielded  on  a  couple  of  events  now.  I  am  professionally  gratified  to 
hear  Joe  LaComb  make  comments  as  he  did  at  a  recent  CEP  meeting, 
saying  that  maybe,  in  fact,  chemistry  is  important.  I've  been  saying 
for  a  long  time  now,  "Chemistry  is  a  perfectly  good  branch  of 
physics.  There's  information  there,  let's  extract  it."  So,  I  think 
there  is  an  avenue  of  potential  advance  which  I  look  forward  to  DNA 
exploring. 

Carothers:  The  only  chemistry  I  ever  hear  about  at  the  CEP 
concerns  how  many  tons  of  carbonate  rock  will  be  affected  per 
kiloton,  or  some  brief  mention  of  the  iron  in  the  canister,  and  how 
much  hydrogen  will  be  produced  from  that. 

Duff:  I  know.  I  know.  Some  four  years  ago  I  got  hold  of  a  suite 
of  gas  sampling  data  from  Livermore,  and  tried  to  see  what  it  told 
us  about  iron  reactions,  and  how  much  rock  was  able  to  give  up 
carbon  dioxide,  and  so  forth.  It  was  surprising  data,  because  there 
were  shots  that  were  right,  in  the  sense  that  they  had  big  amounts 
of  iron  around,  they  were  in  tuff,  and  you'd  expect  under  those 
circumstances  to  be  a  lot  of  hydrogen,  and  indeed  there  was.  There 
were  other  cases  where  there  was  a  minimal  amount  of  iron,  the  shot 
was  in  alluvium,  with  relatively  high  amounts  of  carbonates,  where 
you'd  expect  carbon  dioxide  to  dominate  and  it  did.  But  there  were 
also  cases  where  the  reverse  was  true,  There  were  cases  where 
where  you'd  expect  lots  of  carbon  dioxide  and  instead  you  got  lots 
of  hydrogen.  Or  you  expected  lots  of  hydrogen  and  you  got  lots  of 
carbon  dioxide. 

Another  problem,  which  is  long  standing,  was  shown  in 
Gasbuggy,  but  it  is  also  true  in  all  of  the  Livermore  gas  sampling. 
Why  is  there  so  much  ethane  and  propane  found  in  the  gas  after  a 
shot? 

Carothers:  Now  Russell,  there  aren't  any  hydrocarbons  at  the 
Nevada  Test  Site.  There  is  tuff,  and  clay,  and  lavas,  and  such  like, 
but  there  isn't  any  ethane  or  propane.  You  might  expect  to  find  that 
in  a  gas  field,  but  certainly  not  in  Nevada. 


290 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Duff:  There's  hydrogen  and  there's  carbon  dioxide  at  NTS. 
And  at  high  temperatures  these  react,  and  you  get  methane,  a 
detectable  and  measurable  amount,  like  one  percent.  And,  if  you 
look  at  Chuck  Smith's  gas  sampling  data  there  is  ethane  and  propane 
found  and  reported.  In  equilibrium  you  expect  that  hydrocarbon 
series  to  be  down  about  five  orders  of  magnitude  as  you  go  through 
each  step.  The  mystery  to  me  is  that  the  observation  is  one  order 
of  magnitude  between  methane,  ethane,  and  propane.  One  order 
of  magnitude  for  each  step,  and  we  calculate  five  or  six. 

Carothers:  At  five  orders  of  magnitude  per  step  i  would  think 
it  would  be  very  difficult  to  see  propane,  and  perhaps  you  might  not 
even  see  the  ethane. 

Duff:  That's  right,  but  we  do  see  them.  Now,  I  don't  have  the 
foggiest  idea  what  the  implication  or  importance  of  that  is,  but  it  is 
a  mystery  which  has  been  around  since  Gasbuggy.  I  firmly  believe 
that  when  we  see  something  that  is  a  surprise,  we  have  a  chance  to 
learn  something  we  didn't  know.  When  we  see  what  we  expected 
to  see,  we  haven't  learned  anything  new.  And  so,  it's  in  this  context 
that  I  want  to  understand  that  mystery.  Not  because  I  think  it's 
going  to  be  better  than  sliced  bread,  or  somehow  take  care  of  the 
national  debt;  it's  not  that  kind  of  important.  But  I  think  there  may 
be  something  about  the  phenomenology  which  is  hidden,  at  the 
present  time,  in  that  particular  observation.  So,  as  a  guy  who  is 
interested  more  in  the  scientific  aspects  of  things  than  in  meeting  the 
schedule,  I  am  intrigued.  And,  I  think  there  may  be  something  of 
value  there. 

We  have  a  situation  in  the  gas  sampling  area,  which  I  think  is 
fortuitous.  We  are  getting  data,  and  we've  been  able  to  pretty  much 
make  sense  of  it.  For  instance,  on  Mission  Cyber  we  were  able  to 
say,  from  gas  samples,  that  in  the  chimney  the  cavity  gas  was 
seventy-three  percent  hydrogen  and  twenty-seven  percent  carbon 
dioxide,  with  a  little  bit  of  other  stuff.  We've  got  three  measure¬ 
ments  at  different  times,  and  we  get  essentially  the  same  answer 
each  time.  That's  not  really  a  profound  thing,  but  it  allows  us  to 
investigate  the  whys.  What  temperatures,  what  pressures  would 
give  rise  to  that  answer?  I  wish  this  had  happened  a  decade  ago  so 
I'd  have  some  professional  time  to  try  to  do  something  with  it.  It 
will  be  the  next  generation  who  gets  to  exploit  it,  and  1  hope  there 
is  somebody  who  wants  to  champion  that  kind  of  work,  because  I 
think  there  is  an  opportunity  for  major  success  there. 


291 


11 

The  Residual  Stress  Cage 

What  is  important  in  the  containment  of  an  underground  nuclear 
explosion?  Certainly  the  depth  at  which  the  explosion  takes  place 
is  crucial.  Obviously  a  detonation  on  the  surface  of  ground  will 
release  the  products  of  the  explosion  to  the  atmosphere.  A  detona¬ 
tion  taking  place  miles  underground  would  certainly  be  expected  to 
be  completely  contained,  barring  some  man-made  feature  which 
would  provide  a  path  to  the  surface.  "Deeper  is  better."  The 
lithostatic  stress,  which  is  always  there,  works  to  prevent  the 
formation  of  any  openings  through  which  high  pressure  gases  might 
escape,  and  as  the  weight  of  the  overburden  becomes  greater  the 
energy  released  can  no  longer  lift  the  overlying  material  as  far,  and 
so  on. 

However,  great  depths  of  burial  create  difficult  and  very 
expensive  problems  to  solve.  What  is  a  depth  of  burial  at  which  the 
containment  of  the  detonation  products  confidently  can  be  ex¬ 
pected,  but  which  is  no  greater  than  required  for  that  confidence? 
For  the  moment  we  will  put  aside  consideration  of  the  man-made 
features  such  as  line-of-site  pipes,  cables,  stemming  columns,  and 
other  such  things. 

There  are  three  principal  phenomena,  aside  from  the  lithostatic 
stress  and  the  overburden  weight  that  are  thought  to  play  important 
roles  in  the  containment  of  the  detonation  products  of  a  nuclear 
explosion.  The  importance  of  any  of  these  mechanisms,  or  whether 
any  one  of  them  is  important  at  all,  or  possibly  even  exists  at  all  in 
the  context  of  containment  has  been  the  subject  of  extended  debate. 
Certainly  they  exist,  but  when  they  occur  and  to  what  degree  they 
influence  a  particular  event  is  a  matter  more  of  opinion  than  of 
demonstrable  fact.  Nonetheless,  detonations  are  contained,  regard¬ 
less  of  the  minimal  understanding  of  these  mechanisms. 

One  is  what  in  the  earliest  days  of  underground  testing  was 
called  the  “mystical  magical  membrane,”  and  is  variously  referred 
to  today  as  the  “residual  stress,”  the  “stress  cage,”  or  the  “containment 
cage.”  It  comes  about,  in  theory,  when  the  rock  materials  that  have 
been  pushed  out  by  the  passage  of  the  shock  wave,  and  compressed, 
move  back  toward  the  cavity  and  set  up  a  region  around  the  cavity 


292 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


where  the  hoop  stresses  in  the  rock  are  greater  than  the  cavity 
pressure.  Hence,  gases  in  the  cavity  cannot  be  forced  through  that 
region. 

Another  postulated  mechanism  is  hydrofracturing,  or  crack¬ 
ing,  of  the  rock  near  the  cavity  by  the  gases  which  are  at  high 
pressures  in  the  cavity.  Such  a  crack  exposes  additional  cold 
surfaces,  and  speeds  the  cooling  of  the  cavity  material,  reducing  the 
high  pressures  that  might  force  materials  toward  the  surface.  Hence, 
they  could  reduce  the  flow  from  the  cavity,  and  be  beneficial  to 
containment.  On  the  other  hand,  such  fractures  would  seem  to 
provide  paths  for  flow  of  gases  toward  the  surface,  or  perhaps  to 
some  plane  of  weakness  such  as  fault.  As  such  they  could  be  a  threat 
to  the  containment  of  the  event. 

The  third,  thought  to  be  sometimes  important  in  tunnel  events 
where  a  line-of-sight  pipe  is  used,  is  block  motion.  This  refers  to 
fact  that  upon  tunnel  reentries  very  large  blocks  of  rock  have  been 
observed  to  have  moved  many  feet.  Such  motion  could  conceivably 
be  good  for  containment  by  moving  a  very  thick  block  of  material 
across  the  tunnel,  effectively  sealing  it.  Or,  it  could  be  bad  by 
destroying  or  interfering  with  the  action  of  the  mechanical  closure 
hadware  typically  used  on  line-of-sight  shots. 

There  is,  of  course,  the  possibility  that  all  three  of  these  things 
might  occur  in  various  degrees  on  every  detonation,  either  reinforc¬ 
ing  or  interfering  with  each  other  in  the  containment  ofthe  gases.  In 
a  similar  way,  it  is  difficult  to  confine  the  discussion  of  peoples’ 
opinions  about  why  shots  contain  to  just  one  of  these  mechanisms. 
This  chapter  will  consider  principally  residual  stress,  the  next 
hydrofractures,  and  the  one  following  that,  block  motion. 

Carothers:  in  the  earliest  days  of  the  underground  program 
there  were  people  who  said,  "I  don't  understand  why  every  shot 
doesn't  hydrofract  to  the  surface  and  vent.  Why  do  they  stay  there? 
Everything  is  diverging,  everything  is  being  pulled  apart,  there  is  this 
high  pressure  gas,  and  it  should  hydrofract  to  the  surface  very 
quickly.  But  it  doesn't  do  that."  There  were  other  people  who  said, 
"Well,  there  is  some  sort  of  mystical  magical  membrane  that  keeps 
it  from  doing  that.  There  has  to  be,  because  otherwise,  you're  right, 
you  couldn't  contain  an  underground  shot." 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage  293 

Higgins:  Just  right.  And  that  argument  is  correct,  and  all  of 
the  descriptions  of  what  that  mystical  magical  membrane  was  were 
there.  We  just  didn't  really  stop  to  look.  There  were  clues  about 
the  residual  stress  that  we  found  on  Rainier.  When  we  went  back  and 
examined  the  sandbags  that  had  been  in  the  stemming  around 
Rainier,  we  found  that  the  sand,  which  was  just  loose  tuff  that  had 
been  shoveled  out  of  the  tunnel  and  put  into  cloth  bags,  was  now 
so  hard  that  we  had  to  use  pick  axes  to  remove  them.  The  sand  was 
as  tight  and  as  solid  as  the  original  tuff.  Surprising,  we  thought,  but 
we  ignored  the  clue. 

That  compaction,  we  said,  was  due  to  the  passage  of  the  shock 
wave.  But  when  we  tried  to  compact  materials  with  plane  shocks  in 
the  laboratory,  we  didn't  get  that.  So  we  said,  "I  wonder  why  that 
is,"  and  ignored  the  clue  that  the  rebound  recompaction  was  an 
important  part  of  the  containment  process.  People  used  to  refer  to 
something  they  called  the  "mystical  magical  membrane."  Well,  it 
has  a  real  basis  in  physics,  but  by  using  that  term  we  tended  to 
dismiss  it  as  a  part  of  the  overall  process.  That's  where  the  physics 
should  have  included  the  business  of  rebound,  and  what  we  now 
refer  to  as  the  containment  cage. 

Roland  Herbst  gave  a  long  talk  about  this  along  about  1  960  or 
1961.  He  remarked  about  the  fact,  and  we  reduced  the  argument 
to  the  plane  wave  case,  that  following  the  passage  of  a  shock  there 
was  reverse  motion,  or  rebound,  in  the  direction  from  which  the 
shock  had  come.  So,  you  had  not  described  everything  when  you 
talked,  in  a  shock  tube,  about  the  passage  of  the  shock  wave  itself. 

I  said,  "You  mean  the  shock  rebounds  from  the  other  end."  And 
he  said,  "No,  no,  no.  Make  the  tube  infinitely  long.  After  the  shock 
passes,  a  little  while  later  the  material  will  go  back  the  other  way. 
There  will  be  a  rebound.  That's  because  the  material  now  knows 
there  was  a  shock  wave."  We  argued  about  this,  and  he  convinced 
me  that  yes,  if  there  was  an  initial  pressure,  or  an  initial  number  of 
atoms  per  cubic  centimeter,  there  would  be  rebound  without  any 
reflection.  Knowing  that  there  is  a  rebound,  what  we  then  should 
have  said  was  that  after  a  period  of  time  the  material  comes  back  and 
recompresses.  It's  the  physical  nature  of  the  approximately  spheri¬ 
cal  cavity  that  makes  it  persist.  It's  simply  the  recompaction  of  the 
rock,  which  is  considerable. 


294 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Bob  Brownlee  has  a  series  of  photographs  he's  put  together 
from  the  atmospheric  test  series.  In  many  of  the  early  atmospheric 
tests  we  had  smoke  rockets  that  were  fired  prior  to  the  shot  to  leave 
a  curtain  of  tracers  in  the  atmosphere,  so  we  could  watch  the  air 
shock  from  the  atmospheric  burst,  and  calculate  its  dispersion  and 
strength  and  so  forth.  We  were  looking  at  some  of  those  photo¬ 
graphs  one  day  and  Bob  said,  "Watch  the  smoke  trail  go  by."  We 
were  looking  at  a  long  view  of  some  bunkers,  and  the  smoke  rocket 
trail  went  by  from  left  to  right,  and  he  said,  "Now,  watch  it  come 
back."  And  I  said,  "Recompaction."  We  had  all  of  the  physics  in 
front  of  our  eyes  way  back  in  the  1952,  1953  period  from  the 
atmospheric  tests,  because  the  air  does  the  same  thing.  When  the 
shock  wave  goes  by,  that's  not  the  end;  it  comes  back  again.  And 
that's  the  recompaction  in  the  air. 

I  think  we  saw  these  things,  and  we  didn't  think  about  the 
importance  of  them,  or  that  they  really  were  clues  to  something  far 
broader  than  we  had  constructed  a  concept  for. 

The  point  I'm  trying  to  make  is  that  the  rebound  is  a  necessary 
part  of  the  shock  expansion,  and  one  that  we  ignore  because  of  our 
calcuiational  mind  set.  We  run  calculational  problems  in  an  artificial 
one-dimensional  framework,  which  is  okay;  we  can  put  even  a 
boundary  out  there,  and  it  sort  of  works  for  most  things.  Except, 
it  doesn't  properly  tell  us  the  rest  of  the  story.  What  happens  after 
the  shock  wave  is  gone?  For  a  long  time  we  were  happy  if  we  could 
run  a  one-dimensional  computer  simulation  of  a  nuclear  explosion 
out  to  ten  microseconds.  That  made  the  cavity  start  to  grow,  and 
all  these  things  start  to  happen,  and  the  shock  wave  was  gone  out 
of  the  problem.  But  we  didn't  ask  what  happened  after  that. 

Rimer:  I  was  amazed  when  I  came  to  S-Cubed  that  people  were 
talking  about  this  "mystical  magical  membrane,"  when,  to  a  civil 
engineer,  there  was  nothing  mystical  or  magical  about  it  at  all.  The 
residual  stress  concept  for  metals,  structures,  and  concrete  is  a  very 
well  known  and  well  established  concept  in  civil  engineering. 

Carothers:  What  kinds  of  things  bring  that  about?  Certainly 
not  a  shock  wave. 

Rimer:  Plastic  failure,  under  a  non-uniform  stress  distribution. 
Say  you  take  a  column  and  press  on  it.  That's  a  uniform  stress 
distribution;  it  doesn't  introduce  residual  stresses.  But  if  you  take 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


295 


a  beam  and  put  a  load  on  it,  you  introduce  compression  on  the  top, 
tension  on  the  bottom,  and  so  you  get  a  nonuniform  stress  distribu¬ 
tion  through  the  beam.  Or,  the  torsion  of  a  cylinder.  If  you  load 
it  into  the  plastic  regime,  the  outside  fibers  get  loaded  higher,  and 
they  go  plastic  first.  When  you  take  the  load  off,  stresses  get  locked 
in.  That's  a  well  known  concept  in  civil  engineering. 

Carothers:  Well,  we  didn't  have  any  civil  engineers  considering 
this  problem.  All  we  had  were  physicists  and  calculator  types. 

Rimer:  That's  right. 

Broyles:  I  don't  remember  who  really  came  up  with  the  actual 
idea  of  the  stress  cage.  It  was  based  on  some  calculations,  but  it  was 
fairly  nebulous.  When  you  look  back  at  it,  it's  so  simple  that  a  high 
school  physics  student  can  understand  it.  When  you  deform 
something  classically,  and  stretch  it  out  elastically,  it  rebounds,  and 
is  going  to  have  a  residual  stress. 

Carothers:  That  wasn't  appreciated  by  people  for  a  long  time. 

Broyles:  No,  and  we  at  Sandia  didn't  either.  And  it's  not  at 
all  clear  yet  under  what  conditions,  particularly  in  alluvium,  are  you 
going  to  get  how  much  of  a  stress  cage,  or  how  consistently,  or 
regularly.  I  think  it's  quite  clear-cut  that  in  tuffaceous  materials  you 
regularly  get  a  stress  cage,  and  that  there's  creep,  and  that  it  decays. 
And  that  you  can  cause  perturbations  in  it,  and  get  yourself  in 
trouble  with  things  like  line-of-sight  pipes  sticking  through  it. 

We  got  started,  and  Wendell  Weart  got  started,  worrying  about 
hydrofracing  as  a  way  of  breaking  out  of  the  cavity.  He  started 
trying  to  understand  how  you  could  have  calculations  which  said 
you  had  several  times  overburden  pressure  in  the  cavity,  and  not 
have  the  stuff  get  out  of  the  cavity.  We  then  developed,  and  did  the 
first  in-situ  measurements,  using  high  explosives,  that  really  demon¬ 
strated  the  containment  stress  cage,  I  don't  claim  that  Sandia 
invented  the  idea  of  the  stress  cage,  but  I  think  we  really  pursued 
it,  and  proved  it  in  a  real  environment,  even  though  we  were 
devoting  most  of  our  efforts  to  the  line-of-sight  shots. 

Bass:  I  believe  I  have  seen  firm  evidence  of  the  existence  of  a 
residual  stress  situation,  in  some  situations  in  the  field  -  -  but  in  a 
homogeneous  rock.  Years  and  years  ago  we  did  two  experiments  at 
Sandia.  A  fellow  named  Lynn  Tyler  did  a  residual  stress  experiment 


296 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


called  Puff  and  Tuff.  I  did  all  the  calculations  on  that  thing,  and  I'm 
very  proud  of  Puff  and  Tuff.  It  was  a  beautiful  experiment.  We  fired 
a  256  pound  charge,  which  had  two  pipes  looking  at  it.  One  came 
down  the  tunnel  we  used  to  put  the  charge  in.  We  put  a  funnel  on 
the  front  of  it,  where  it  went  to  the  HE.  That  was  calculated  to  keep 
the  pipe  open,  so  the  gas  would  come  down,  and  then  be  there 
available  to  crack  the  formation.  It  is  very  important  that  you  put 
the  funnel  on;  otherwise  the  hydrodynamics  will  close  off  the  pipe 
right  away,  and  you  get  no  gases  in  it.  The  tunnel  was  stemmed,  of 
course. 

When  we  were  first  designing  the  experiment,  that  was  the  only 
pipe  we  planned.  Al  Church,  of  the  firing  group,  was  sitting  in  on 
the  meeting  on  firing  the  HE,  and  he  said,  "Why  don't  you  just  drill 
a  hole  on  beyond  the  charge,  and  have  one  that  is  in  the  tuff,  not 
in  the  stemming?"  So,  after  we  excavated  the  place  for  the  charge, 
we  drilled  a  hole  on  into  the  tuff.  It  was  six  inches  in  diameter,  and 
we  put  a  transite  pipe  in  it  and  forgot  about  it.  And  again  we  put 
this  funnel  on.  Thank  God  Allen  suggested  that  pipe,  because  that 
one  worked,  and  the  one  in  the  stemming  didn't  work  at  all. 

So  we  fired  the  shot.  The  HE  gases  went  down  the  pipe  in  the 
tuff,  right  away,  and  delivered  enough  pressure  at  the  end  to  crack 
the  rock.  We  know  it  got  down  there  very  quickly  because  we  had 
a  pressure  gauge  at  the  end  of  the  pipe  in  the  stemming  to  find  out 
when  the  gas  got  down  there,  and  it  got  down  there  like  a  bat  out 
of  hell.  We  had  calculated  where  the  residual  stress  should  be,  and 
when  we  went  back  in  there  was  no  cracking  at  all  for  one  cavity 
radius  beyond  the  original  cavity.  Then  all  of  a  sudden  we  have  a 
vertical  crack  that  goes  up  and  down  as  far  as  you  can  see,  with  black 
detonation  products  all  through  it.  But  there's  absolutely  no  crack 
where  we  calculated  the  existence  of  a  residual  stress  field.  Now, 

I  think  that  is  very  good  evidence. 

There  was  one  thing  that  was  bad  about  the  experiment.  That 
was,  we  did  change  the  stresses  in  the  tunnel  by  the  excavation.  In 
the  same  place  where  this  residual  stress  field  would  be,  we  had  a 
modified  stress  state  due  to  the  excavation.  This  always  has  to  be 
considered.  There's  some  creep  that  will  take  place,  and  there  will 
be  some  differences.  But  indeed,  you  could  go  back  in  there  and  for 


The  Residua l  Stress  Cage 


297 


a  full  cavity  radius  there  was  no  crack  at  all.  We  used  the  Alpine 
Miner  when  we  went  back  in,  and  we  stopped  it  every  six  or  eight 
inches,  and  did  a  complete  map  of  the  area. 

Now,  something  very  interesting  happened  with  the  pipe  in  the 
stemming.  We  closed  that  pipe  in  the  stemming.  That  stemming 
was  supposedly  GSRM  -  -  rock  matching  stemming  grout.  Now,  you 
know  as  well  as  I  do,  it  doesn't  match  at  all.  Indeed,  we  closed  the 
pipe  in  the  stemming;  we  did  not  close  the  pipe  in  the  tuff.  I  think 
that  this  happens  should  be  known  in  the  containment  community. 

On  Carl  Smith's  high  explosive  experiments  we  do  see  some 
stress  records  that  look  good,  and  there  may  be  an  indication  of 
residual  stress  on  those.  I  believe  I've  seen  residual  stress  twice. 
Once  was  on  Puff  and  Tuff;  the  other  was  a  precursor  to  Puff  and 
Tuff.  That  was  a  five  pound  cylindrical  HE  charge.  It  was  the  first 
thing  that  Lynn  Tyler  did. 

After  the  shot  Lynn  got  a  very  bright  guy  to  go  in  and  dig  it  out. 
This  guy  had  nothing  better  to  do,  and  he  went  in  there  with  a  dental 
pick,  a  tiny  chisel,  and  a  paint  brush,  and  dug  it  out  like  an 
archeologist.  He  found  a  cavity,  a  nice  little  cavity,  elongated 
because  of  the  cylindrical  charge.  Of  course  it  was  small,  and  the 
material  was  a  nice  smooth,  very  homogeneous,  weak  tuff,  with  no 
cracks  in  it  at  all.  Then  he  found  a  region  that  didn't  look  like  the 
same  stuff  at  all.  It  had  absolutely  no  structure  to  it.  He  did  find 
some  little  cracks  too;  right  on  the  edge  of  the  cavity  he  found  some 
circumferential  cracks.  Then  he  got  into  this  region  of  absolute 
mush.  He  went  into  this  region,  which  was  about  the  same  size  as 
the  cavity.  Then  he  went  to  the  edge  of  that  material,  and  he  found 
circumferential  cracks  ail  the  way  around,  and  radial  cracks  running 
all  over  hell.  Now,  I  claim  that  is  a  stress  cage.  And,  unfortunately, 

I  have  just  given  you  the  best  write  up  known  to  man.  It  has  never 
been  documented,  and  I  cannot  get  the  man  who  did  it  to  do  that. 

Carothers:  Carl,  your  gauges  can  survive  for  a  little  while  in  a 
ten  kiiobar  regime.  It  would  seem  it  would  be  fairly  straightforward 
for  you  to  make  measurements  at,  say,  one  kiiobar. 

Smith:  One  kiiobar  is  pretty  close  to  the  crossover  point, 
where  things  last  forever. 


298 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Then  you  should  be  able  to  make  measurements 
which  would  address  the  question  of  whether  there  is  actually  such 
a  thing  as  a  residual  stress  cage,  or  whether  it  is  a  figment  of  the 
calculator's  imagination.  Have  you  done  any  work  on  that? 

Smith:  That  has  been  a  prime  question  for  ten  years. 

Carothers:  If  it's  still  a  question,  you  must  not  have  gotten  the 
answer. 

Smith:  On  the  HE  shots,  at  a  kilobar  and  below,  we  have  long¬ 
term  measurements  that  do  show  the  existence  of  the  residual  stress 
cage,  very  clearly  and  unequivocally.  These  are  from  both  the  stress 
gauges  that  show  a  long-term  offset,  and  also  from  the  motion 
gauges,  which  are  integrated  accelerometers,  that  show  the  re¬ 
bound.  They  show  you  the  material  coming  back  in,  and  when  you 
look  at  the  calculations  you  will  see  that  motion  is  what  sets  up  the 
residual  stress  cage.  That's  really  quite  clear  from  the  HE  tests, 
which  go  from  eight  pounds  up  to  two  thousand  pounds.  In 
addition,  we  have  been  quite  successful  in  measuring  cavity  pres¬ 
sures  on  most  of  those  HE  shots. 

Carothers:  If  your  measurements  clearly  show  the  existence  of 
a  region  of  long-term  higher  stress  around  your  shots,  why  are  there 
still  arguments  about  whether  or  not  there  is  what  is  called  a  residual 
stress  cage,  which  presumably  is  the  principal  mechanism  which 
causes  nuclear  events  to  be  contained? 

Smith:  I  suspect  that  nowadays  everyone  sort  of  believes  there 
is  residual  stress,  because  it's  been  talked  about  and  thought  about 
for  so  long.  But,  good  valid  measurements  on  the  nuclear  scale  are 
very  hard  to  come  by,  and  I  think  this  is  related  to  the  inhomogenieties 
of  the  field.  On  the  HE  scale  we  were  doing  experiments  in  very 
selected  areas,  and  we  very  carefully  explored  the  geology  ahead  of 
time  to  make  sure  we  had  a  good  uniform  material.  We  took  a  lot 
of  samples  to  have  it  characterized,  and  so  we  had  a  lot  of  data  for 
the  calculators  to  play  with.  It  was  an  almost  homogeneous  bed  to 
work  in,  without  fractures  and  faults,  or  major  discontinuities.  But 
when  you  go  to  the  nuclear  scale,  you  are  encompassing  all  those 
geologic  problems.  The  argument  may  be  more  now,  "What  are  the 
departures  from  a  homogeneous  region,  and  how  do  these  depar¬ 
tures  affect  the  residual  stress?"  Maybe  these  departures  are 
sufficient  to  negate  it  to  some  extent,  or  in  some  regions. 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


299 


While  I  was  doing  hydrofrac  work  I  was  also  involved  with  the 
measurements  on  the  DNA  nuclear  shots.  Occasionally  Don  Eilers 
would  talk  Bob  Bass  into  making  measurements  on  some  of  his 
vertical  shots,  and  so  there  were  about  a  half  dozen  vertical  shots, 
including  some  LLL  shots,  where  we  did  some  measurements. 

Carothers:  When  you're  working  in  the  tunnels  you're  always 
working  in  the  tuffs.  Were  the  vertical  shots  deep  enough  that  they 
were  in  the  tuffs  too? 

Smith:  Most  of  them  were,  but  there  was  one  I  remember  that 
was  in  the  alluvium.  That  was  U 1 0be,  one  of  the  Livermore  shots. 
It  was  a  low  yield  thing,  and  we  got  some  fairly  nice  measurements 
on  that.  It  was  the  early  days  of  the  gypsum  concrete  plugs,  and 
there  were  two  stress  measurements  in  one  of  those  plugs;  one  at  the 
top,  and  one  near  the  bottom.  They  saw  a  little  over  half  a  kilobar, 
and  after  the  dynamic  phase  they  came  down  and  showed  about  a 
hundred  bar  offset.  We  were  recording  the  signals  on  a  tape  deck, 
which  would  run  out  of  tape  at  about  eight  minutes.  But,  at  about 
seven  minutes  these  signals,  which  had  been  decaying,  got  down  to 
zero  stress  level.  So,  those  are  a  couple  of  measurements  in  alluvium 
that  suggest  there  was  a  residual  stress  field  loading  that  stemming 
plug.  And  so  there  are  these  bits  and  pieces  of  measurements  on 
nuclear  shots  which  say,  "Yes,  there's  a  residual  stress." 

Carothers:  If  you  have  a  shock  that's  moving  out  in  an  infinite 
medium,  after  the  shock  has  passed  the  material  moves  back  a  bit, 
doesn't  it? 

Rambo:  Yes.  I  see  that  in  the  calculations.  I  think  that's  part 
of  the  fundamental  process.  There's  material  outside  of  the  plastic 
region  which  responds  in  an  elastic  way.  The  wave  runs  through  and 
pushes  things  out,  and  that  whole  elastic  area  outside  of  the  plastic 
region  tends  to  want  to  come  back  in  an  elastic  type  rebound.  Even 
the  plastic  area  does  some  of  that. 

So,  for  a  brief  period,  we  see  in  calculations,  and  it  certainly 
is  up  for  endless  discussion,  that  there  is  a  rebound.  The  data  that 
we  look  at,  in  terms  of  velocity  data,  tends  to  show  that  also;  the 
overdriven  system  wants  to  come  back  a  little  bit,  to  flow  back,  or 
to  compress  around  the  cavity.  In  the  calculations  we  tend  to  see 
that  kind  of  motion.  We  think  that's  the  source  of  our  residual  stress 
field,  and  that's  the  source  of  what  helps  us  in  containment.  That's 


300 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


without  respect  to  any  reflections  from  layers,  or  the  surface.  Those 
tend  to  come,  usually,  after  the  rebound  for  a  lot  of  events,  but  of 
course  there  are  some  that  come  earlier  due  to  where  layers  are. 

We  see  this  motion  in  the  velocity  gauges  that  are  put  around 
many  of  the  shots.  You  see  the  peak  wave,  and  then  the  velocity 
starts  to  come  back.  If  you  integrate  those,  in  many  cases  you  get 
the  motion  of  the  material  coming  back,  either  to  where  it  was  or 
maybe  not  quite  as  far,  depending  on  where  you  are.  There  are 
many  cases  where  it  comes  back  all  the  way,  but  there  are  a  few  cases 
where  it  doesn't. 

The  surface  of  the  ground  is  a  free  surface,  so  the  stress  at  the 
surface  is,  in  the  calculations,  always  zero.  So,  there  is  a  reflection 
back,  and  it  runs  back  down  toward  the  shot.  Spall  is  the  occurrence 
of  the  doubling  of  the  particle  velocities  at  the  surface.  They're 
traveling  twice  as  fast  as  the  particles  do  from  down  below,  and  so 
the  groumd  tends  to  break  apart.  You  see  a  rise  at  the  surface  that, 
if  you  have  a  sharp  wave  front,  will  go  twice  as  fast  as  the  particles 
do  down  below.  And  so  this  sends  a  signal  that  is  releasing  the  stress. 

Carothers:  The  shock  goes  out  as  a  compressional  wave,  and 
is  reflected  back  as  a  tension  wave?  It  tends  to  pull  the  residual  stress 
cage  apart,  in  a  sense? 

Rambo:  That's  exactly  right.  Bob  Terhune  was  worried  about 
this  tension,  or  rarefaction  wave  coming  back  from  the  surface  on 
some  particular  shots.  He  thought  he  was  able  to  see,  in  the 
calculations,  some  shots  that  had  difficulties  because  high  velocities 
brought  this  rarefaction  wave  back  before  the  residual  stress  had 
time  to  set  up.  In  the  calculations,  and  I'm  not  sure  I  can  answer 
exactly  why  in  all  cases,  but  if  the  rarefaction  gets  back  before  or 
during  the  time  of  the  setup  of  the  residual  stress,  it  doesn't  behave 
as  well,  at  least  in  the  calculations,  and  it  may  not  set  up  right.  And 
that  may  be  a  detriment  to  containment. 

Hudson:  I  would  say  that  the  idea  of  a  residual  stress  field  as 
the  key  to  containment  is  little  more  than  a  myth. 

Carothers:  You  have  attempted  to  make  measurements  of  the 
residual  stress  field  on  some  nuclear  shots,  haven't  you? 

Hudson  I  have.  Not  very  successfully.  I  have  one  set  of  data 
on  a  low  yield  event,  where  the  stress  in  the  ground,  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  deepest  plug,  which  turned  out  to  be  about  where  the  residual 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


301 


stress  field  was  expected,  peaked  at  about  a  kilobar,  or  a  little  less, 
which  was  about  where  it  was  supposed  to.  It  then  fell  rapidly  to 
an  almost  steady  state  level  at  perhaps  a  fourth  of  a  kilobar,  which 
was  kind  of  what  was  expected,  or  predicted  for  residual  stress.  I 
even  published  this,  not  too  widely,  but  within  the  community.  The 
data  were  criticized  because  there  was  no  way  we  could  demonstrate 
that  the  gauge  had  not  been  significantly  affected  by  the  strain  in  the 
medium. 

This  whole  subject  is  called  the  inclusion  problem.  If  you're  in 
a  stress  regime  where  the  ground  behaves  as  a  fluid,  you  don't  have 
a  problem,  and  you  can  probably  make  very  good  stress  measure¬ 
ments.  That  boundary  is  probably  at  three  or  four  kilobars.  Above 
three  or  four  kilobars  almost  everything  acts,  in  the  ground  anyway, 
like  a  fluid.  So,  if  you  can  measure  the  pressure,  you  probably  know 
what  the  stress  is.  When  you  get  below,  say,  one  kilobar,  then 
you're  trying  to  make  a  measurement  in  a  material  which  doesn't 
necessarily  expand  again  after  it  is  compressed.  The  result  is  that 
you  can  have  a  residual  strain  -  -  residual  compression,  residual 
expansion,  what  have  you  -  -  that  continues  to  make  the  gauge  feel 
like  it's  in  a  higher  or  lower  stress  field,  when  it  really  may  not  be. 
So,  I  sort  of  gave  up  on  making  residual  stress  measurements. 
They're  almost  imponderable. 

Carothers:  There  was  somebody  who  said  that  he  could  not 
think  of  any  kind  of  stress  gauge  that  you  can  make  that  isn't 
sensitive  to  strain. 

Hudson:  These  stress  gauges  I'm  talking  about  were  designed 
so  they  could  be  corrected  for  strain.  Some  materials  are  much 
more  sensitive  to  strain  than  others,  and  some  are  much  more 
sensitive  to  stress  than  they  are  to  strain.  So,  by  using  the  right 
combination  of  materials  you  can  subtract  out  the  strain.  But  it's 
still  hard  to  convince  everyone  that  you've  properly  accounted  for 
the  problem. 

App:  I  don't  believe  we  know  as  much  about  the  residual  stress 
as  we  once  thought  we  did.  The  people  who  have  looked  at  the 
stress  cage  more  closely  than  anybody  have  been  the  DNA.  They 
have  better  control,  because  they're  able  to  mine  back,  and  they  can 
use  more  gauging  at  working  point  level  than  we  can.  I've  looked 
at  the  data  that  Carl  Smith  and  Bob  Bass  have  been  collecting. 


302 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


We've  been  using  that  data,  and  it's  interesting  that  they  cannot 
consistently  see  a  residual  stress  in  their  stress  measurements.  Now, 
it  may  be  an  instrumentation  problem,  or  it  may  be  that  the  residual 
stress  really  is  absent,  or  at  least  different  than  the  way  we  model 
it.  I  don't  know  which.  Calculations  certainly  show  the  formation 
of  a  residual  stress  field.  There's  no  doubt  about  that.  But  that 
doesn't  mean  it  actually  exists  in  nature. 

Carothers:  There  are  people  who  might  say  something  like  the 
following:  "The  physics  is  right.  The  codes  are  right.  And  if  you 
lived  in  a  uniform,  homogeneous  world,  and  you  calculated  what 
was  going  to  happen,  you  would  see  a  residual  stress  cage,  and  it 
would  be  there.  But  you  don't  live  in  such  a  world." 

App:  Well,  the  codes  are  pretty  good  at  looking  at  the 
potential  effects  of  layering,  and  non-homogenieties.  One  suspi¬ 
cion  is  that  material  that  has  been  shocked,  has  been  worked,  has 
been  strained,  and  has  had  tremendous  pore  pressures  built  up  due 
to  trapped  water,  is  a  completely  different  material  than  it  started 
out  as.  It  loses  its  strength,  and  cannot  support  a  residual  stress 
field. 

Some  of  the  theoretical  models  predict  no  stress  cage.  The 
physics  in  the  effective  stress  models  would  suggest  that,  out  at  least 
to  some  range,  you  have  zero  strength  in  the  material.  Now,  the 
material  has  to  have  some  residual  shear  strength  in  order  to  have 
a  residual  stress  field.  It  has  to  be  able  to  support  deviatoric  stress, 
or  stress  differences,  in  order  to  have  a  stress  field  of  the  type  we're 
referring  to,  where  the  stress  tangential  to  the  cavity  is  higher  than 
any  other  stress  component.  If  the  shear  strength  goes  to  zero,  you 
can't  have  a  residual  stress  field.  There  has  to  be  some  residual 
strength  in  that  rock.  Now,  the  question  is,  does  that  material  have 
essentially  no  residual  shear  strength? 

Russ  Duff,  of  S-Cubed,  has  questioned  the  role  of  the  residual 
stress  as  the  principal  agent  of  containment.  As  he  expresses  it,  it 
is  not  the  physics  used  in  developing  the  calculational  codes,  but  the 
presumptions  upon  which  they  are  based  that  should  be  called  into 
question. 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage  303 

Duff:  The  important  observation,  to  me,  in  the  Rainier 
reentry,  was  that  the  explosion  developed  a  large  quasi-spherical 
cavity  with  a  reasonably  well  defined  lower  boundary.  This  lower 
boundary  was  surrounded  by  roughly  a  meter  of  plastically  de¬ 
formed  rock,  which  was  fractured  at  more  or  less  regular  intervals. 
But,  outside  of  this  meter  or  so,  the  statements  are  that  the  rock 
displacement  seems  to  be  dominated  by  generalized  block  motions, 
by  motions  that  occurred  along  faults,  bedding  planes,  joints; 
weaknesses  in  the  rock  of  one  sort  or  another.  Now,  that  observa¬ 
tion  was  made,  and  was  well  documented  -  -  there  are  photographs, 
there  are  sketches,  there  are  the  clear  words. 

We  can  set  that  next  to  the  comments  that  have  been  often 
made  by  joe  LaComb  and  others,  that  inside  of  something  like  two 
cavity  radii  you  really  can't  make  sense  out  of  the  displacements. 
Things  move  around  in  an  unpredictable  way.  For  instance,  on 
Tom-Midnight  Zephyr,  which  was  a  relatively  low  yield  shot  fired  in 
Area  12,  there  was  a  reentry  hole  drilled  from  the  tunnel  back 
towards  Tom  through  a  region  of  displaced  tuff.  If  you  look  at  the 
configuration,  and  you  expand  the  cavity,  displace  the  rock  as  the 
naive  picture  would  displace  that  rock,  the  reentry  hole,  RE  #1, 
would  pass  from  the  tunnel  to  the  working  point  through  displaced 
tuff. 

What  was  observed?  Rubber,  steel,  electric  cable,  grout,  tuff; 
little  bits  and  pieces  of  all  kinds  of  things.  There  was  not  spherical 
displacement,  or  quasi-spherical  displacement.  This  is  an  example 
in  the  relatively  recent  history  of  the  same  thing  that  was  pointed 
out  concerning  the  displacements  that  were  seen  at  Rainier.  Now 
Rainier  was  very  much  simpler,  being  a  shot  with  no  line  of  sight, 
and  no  stemming  in  the  way  tunnels  are  currently  stemmed. 

The  community  has  known  this  now  for  thirty  years,  and  I  feel 
that  we  haven't  drawn  the  obvious  conclusion  from  it.  The 
conclusion  is  that  our  first-order  model  of  what  happens  after  an 
explosion,  which  is  based  on  the  assumption  that  a  one-dimensional 
spherical  picture  is  an  acceptable,  a  correct  first  approximation  to 
what  goes  on,  is  simply  not  correct.  As  we  do  more  complex  things, 
as  we  worry  about  layering,  or  as  we  do  line-of-sight  experiments  in 
tunnels,  or  things  of  that  sort,  then  we  go  to  axi-symmetric 
calculations.  We  try  to  treat  the  wave  reflections  from  interfaces, 
we  look  at  the  collapse  of  tunnels,  and  the  interactions  with  line-of- 


304 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


sight  pipes,  and  things  of  that  kind.  This  is  all  based  on  an  extension 
of  our  belief  that  the  first-order  approximation  of  one-dimensional 
spherical  motion  is  at  least  a  place  to  start. 

Out  of  this  basic  assumption  comes  our  concept  of  the  residual 
stress  field.  We  say  the  explosion  occurs,  the  cavity  forms,  the  rock 
is  forced  out,  there  is  plastic  distortion.  There  is  then  elastic 
rebound,  which  compresses  the  rock,  builds  up  a  residual  stress 
field,  and  "Voiia!"  We  have  the  intellectual  explanation  for  the 
"mystical  magical  membrane"  that  people  used  to  talk  about  before 
the  1  973  or  1  974  time  frame,  when  the  residual  stress  concept  was 
widely  taken  to  be  the  basis  for  containment. 

Carothers:  Would  it  be  fair  to  say  that  this  assumption  of  a 
spherically  symmetric  cavity  growth  is  based  on  the  idea  that  the 
amount  of  deposited  energy  is  so  large,  is  deposited  so  fast,  and  the 
shocks  that  develop  are  so  strong  that  within  that  region  you're 
talking  about  it  doesn't  really  matter  what's  there?  That  it 
overwhelms  the  material  properties,  and  it  doesn't  matter  whether 
it's  tuff  or  alluvium  or  granite  or  whatever?  Is  that  the  basis  of  this 
approximation,  do  you  think? 

Duff:  Well,  that  may  be  the  basis  of  it,  and  that  is  what  was 
observed  at  Rainier,  but  that  approximation  seems  to  apply  only  for 
one  meter  past  the  cavity  boundary-  -  not  for  the  region  over  which 
we  think  the  residual  stress  field  sets  up  and  is  effective. 

Carothers:  Which  you  take  to  be  between  one  and  two  cavity 
radii? 

Duff:  Yes.  So,  I  think  what  we  have  done,  and  I'm  saying  DNA 
now  because  DNA  is  the  only  testing  organization  which  has  made 
a  practice  of  trying  to  measure  rock  properties  and  strengths  in 
detail,  is  we've  taken  cores  of  the  rock,  and  we  have  protected  that 
core  as  well  as  we  can.  We  have  then  sent  it  to  the  laboratory, 
primarily  to  Terra  Tek,  and  they  have  developed  good  and  presum¬ 
ably  reliable  techniques  to  measure  the  mechanical  properties  of 
that  rock.  And  we  have  used  those  measured  properties  as  input  to 
material  models,  which  then  go  into  the  code,  and  the  continuum 
mechanics  calculational  procedures  then  give  us  predictions  of 
stresses,  velocities,  displacements,  and  ultimately,  residual  stresses; 
all  the  observables  and  calculated  parameters  of  interest. 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


305 


I  believe,  however,  that  if  nature  tells  us  that  the  displacement 
for  a  major  part  of  the  overall  phenomenon  that  we're  looking  at  is 
not  quasi-one  dimensional,  but  is  governed  by  the  motion  of  more 
or  less  arbitrary  blocks  of  rock,  the  predictions  we  get  from  a  one¬ 
dimensional  model  may  not  be  correct. 

Now,  I  want  to  qualify  that  in  the  following  sense.  The 
explosion  of  a  nuclear  device  does  give  rise  to  a  very  large  energy 
release,  and  it  gives  rise  to  very  high  pressures.  These  pressures  are 
going  to  send  shock  waves  out,  the  shock  waves  are  going  to  make 
material  motions  to  generate  particle  displacements,  particle  veloci¬ 
ties,  and  they  will  compress  rock  just  as  the  one-dimensional 
argument  says.  But,  if  a  material  is  free,  or  if  a  material  chooses  to 
deform  in  a  non-radiai  way  by  slipping  along  joints  or  faults  or 
bedding  planes,  then  the  overall  response  will  be,  or  may  be, 
intrinsically  different  than  what  we  have  accepted  as  intellectually 
satisfying.  In  other  words,  I'm  arguing  that  the  residual  stress 
concept,  which  comes  out  of  the  one-dimensional  simple  picture, 
may  be  one  of  those  constructs  which  seems  consistent  with  the 
understanding,  which  is  intellectually  very  satisfying,  which  meets 
the  needs  of  the  community,  and  which  is  fiat  wrong. 

Carothers:  I  thought  DNA  people  had  made  post-shot  mea¬ 
surements  in  the  tunnels,  and  that  they  had  found  evidence  of 
residual  stresses. 

Duff:  They  have  not  found  residual  stress.  The  DNA  efforts 
to  measure  residual  stresses  have  come  in  two  areas,  basically.  One 
of  them  has  been  reentry  hydrofracs.  They  will  decide  that  they're 
going  to  run  a  reentry  tunnel  between  the  work  drift  and  the  main 
drift  on  a  particular  shot.  Usually  before  DNA  runs  a  tunnel  they 
do  an  exploratory  boring  to  make  sure  that  there's  nothing  ahead 
of  them  that  would  cause  some  particular  concern.  So,  they'll  have 
a  drill  hole  that  goes  from  some  place  near  the  end  of  stemming  to 
the  cavity  boundary,  or  the  cavity  vicinity.  After  they've  finished 
the  reconnaissance  in  that  hole  they  sometimes  will  hydrofrac  it. 
They  set  a  pair  of  packers  in  two  places  and  pump  in,  let's  say,  blue 
dyed  water.  Then  as  they  mine  back,  when  they  reenter  this  area 
they  can  see  that  the  blue  fractures  go  some  direction,  and  some 
distance.  From  this  they  can  get  the  directions  of  the  fractures,  and 
from  the  measurements  of  the  hydrofracing  pressures,  they  get  an 
idea  of  the  stress  states  that  existed  at  the  time. 


306 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Some  of  the  experiments  have  shown  directions  of  fracturing 
which  are  consistent  with  the  expectation,  or  prediction,  of  a 
residual  stress  field.  Inside  of  a  particular  radius  the  fractures  are 
perpendicular  to  the  hole,  and  outside  they  are  parallel  with  the 
hole,  or  vice  versa.  But  the  magnitudes  have,  I  think,  routinely  been 
comparable  to  or  less  than  the  magnitude  of  pressure  required  to 
break  the  rock  before  there  was  a  shot.  So,  there  is  only  at  most  a 
very  small  stress  increase,  but  sometimes  there  is  evidence  that  the 
directions  are  right. 

Also  there  have  been  some  efforts  to  install  hydrofracing 
instruments.  Typically  this  is  a  hose,  or  a  pipe  of  some  sort,  at  the 
end  of  which  they  put  what  has  been  described  as  a  rebar  nest.  That 
is  a  whole  bunch  of  rebars  welded  together,  jammed  in  the  end  of 
a  hole  and  grouted  in.  One  can  then  hydrofrac  this  area  with  red 
dye,  measuring  the  pressures.  After  the  shot,  and  hopefully  very 
soon  after  the  shot,  one  will  pump  in  blue  dye  and  try  to  frac  the 
rock  again.  Then  when  you  reenter  you  compare  the  directions  of 
the  red  fractures  with  the  directions  of  the  blue  fractures.  And  you 
compare  the  pressure  measurements  as  indications  of  the  stress 
states.  I  don't  think  these  techniques  have  worked  very  well  -  -  the 
pressure  lines  break  when  the  shot  is  fired,  or  something  happens  to 
the  equipment. 

There  is  a  third  system  which  is  described  as  the  zero  moving 
parts  system.  This  is  equipment  developed  by  Terra  Tek,  in  which 
there  is  a  high  pressure  vessel  connected  to  a  scratch  gauge  which 
indicates  pressure.  When  the  ground  shock  comes  along,  this  high 
pressure  vessel  is  opened,  and  a  colored  fluid  is  injected  into  the 
rock.  The  scratch  gauge  indicates  the  pressure  history  in  the  fluid. 
No  electronics,  no  moving  parts  except  the  fluid  runs  out,  and  that's 
it. 

That  has  provided  data  from  at  least  one  experiment.  The 
evidence  from  the  one  case  where  it  did  work,  that  I  heard  about, 
is  surprising  because  the  indicated  stress,  at  basically  zero  time  and 
immediately  after,  was  lower  than  pre-shot. 

Carothers:  Well,  we  know  that  can't  be  so. 

Duff:  No,  I  don't  know  we  know  that  can't  be  so.  The 
measurement  is  not  consistent  with  the  expectation  of  a  residual 
stress,  but  you  can  argue  that  well,  after  all  this  was  only  the  first 
time  the  equipment  apparently  worked.  Maybe  it  didn't  work. 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


307 


maybe  there  was  some  bug  somewhere  -  -  so  try  it  again.  Maybe  they 
have  tried  it  again;  I  don't  know.  I  think  that  when  it  comes  to 
measuring  residual  stresses  in  a  nuclear  environment,  we  haven't 
done  it.  There  are  a  lot  of  technical  reasons  why  it's  hard  to  do. 

In  the  nuclear  case,  the  early  cases,  when  there  were  indica¬ 
tions  of  low  stresses,  people  said,  "We  didn't  get  around  to 
reentering  and  drilling  this  hole  and  doing  the  hydrofrac  until  three, 
four,  five,  six  months  after  the  shot.  Maybe  the  stress  has  just  leaked 
away.  But  it  must  have  been  there  earlier."  Some  of  the  other 
experiments,  like  the  zero  moving  parts  measurement  by  Terra  Tek, 
suggest  maybe  there  isn't  any  in  the  first  place. 

They  have  found  some  evidence  that  the  directions  of  fractures 
are  what  one  would  expect  based  on  the  predictions,  but  they 
haven't  found  strong  stress  fields.  Now,  one  can  argue,  "Oh,  they 
have  decayed  away."  That  might  be  true. 

Carothers:  There  were  tests  done  at  SRI  -  -  small  amounts  of 
HE  detonated  in  concrete  blocks  -  -  and  residual  stress  fields  were 
found. 

Duff:  Those  were  the  grout-spheres  tests  at  SRI.  I  think  in  that 
case  we  may  have  been  misled  by  experiments  which  were  modeling 
a  real  world,  but  the  models  were  too  good,  in  a  sense.  The  grouts 
as  poured  were  sufficiently  homogeneous  that  the  assumptions  of 
the  one-dimensional  model  were  in  fact  reasonably  valid  for  those 
experiments. 

The  measurement  technique  which  was  used  in  those  tests 
consisted  of  circumferential  copper  wires  cast  into  grout  spheres. 
The  sphere  was  then  placed  in  a  magnetic  field,  such  that  as  the 
cavity  was  formed,  and  as  the  grout  moved  radially  outward,  the 
wires  cut  the  magnetic  field  and  generated  a  voltage;  this  voltage 
was  proportional  to  the  velocity  of  the  wire.  The  diagnostics 
worked,  and  that  in  itself  tells  us  the  motion  was  reasonably 
uniform.  It  was  not  dominated  by  block  displacements,  which 
would  have  sheared  the  wires.  That  is  a  major  diagnostic  problem 
in  the  nuclear  area;  it's  very  difficult  to  get  cable  survival,  which  is 
why  it  has  been  difficult  to  get  cavity  pressures  or  cavity  gas  samples 
on  a  routine  basis.  The  conclusion  I've  come  to  is  that  we  have 
measured  residual  stresses  in  the  grout  spheres  experiments,  where 


308 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


we're  dealing  with  a  homogeneous,  well-behaved  material.  And 
they  seem  to  be  strong.  But  they  go  away  quite  quickly,  through 
some  diffusion  or  creep  process. 

I  think  any  time  that  nature  responds  as  the  one-dimensional 
calculations  suggest  that  it  should  respond,  we  will  in  fact  get  all  of 
the  results  of  the  one-dimensional  calculations  -  -  the  residual  stress 
field  and  ail  the  other  things  that  go  with  it.  My  point  is  we  that  have 
had,  in  the  books,  the  results  of  the  very  careful  work  that  Livermore 
had  the  opportunity,  and  the  skill,  to  do  on  Rainier.  And  all  of  us 
have  heard  Joe  LaComb  and  others  talk  about  the  difficulties  of 
understanding  displacements  within  a  couple  of  cavity  radii  of  an 
explosion.  I  don't  think  we  have  drawn  the  appropriate  conclusion 
from  the  information  we  have.  And  that  conclusion,  as  far  as  I'm 
concerned,  is  that  the  assumptions  we've  made  about  how  the  world 
is  going  to  respond  do  not  lead  to  the  way  the  world  does  respond. 
Therefore,  the  conclusions  that  we  draw  from  our  assumed  response 
prediction  may  not  be  correct. 

I  think  there  is  some  residual  stress  field,  because  there  is  some 
plastic  distortion.  There  is  an  elastic  rebound,  but  I  doubt  if  the 
residual  stress  field  is  of  the  magnitude  that  we  predict,  is  in  the 
locations  that  we  predict,  or  that  it  sets  up  at  the  time  that  we 
predict.  It's  some  result  of  the  distortions  and  the  displacements 
which  actually  occur,  but  not  those  that  we  assume  based  on  the 
simple  one-dimensional  models. 

Carothers:  Let's  see  if  you  would  agree  with  this.  The 
calculations  are  fine,  and  they  predict  the  right  phenomenology,  but 
for  a  world  we  don't  have.  If  we're  going  to  believe,  or  base  our 
actions  on  this  kind  of  a  model  we  could  be  wrong.  You  might  go 
on  further  and  say  that  there  are  a  few  cases  where  we  have  been 
wrong  for  reasons  that  we  have  not  yet  explained,  and  the  model 
does  not  give  an  explanation. 

Duff:  Precisely.  I  think  that's  well  stated. 

Let's  look  at  some  other  bits  of  evidence.  Cavity  radius.  I'm 
not  talking  about  whether  the  cavity  is  oblate,  or  prolate,  or 
spherized.  We  have  a  constant  factor,  called  the  K-factor,  that  is 
used  in  every  presentation  as  a  measure  of  the  expected  cavity  size. 
And  we  find  that  70  is  a  remarkably  good  empirical  scaling  constant 
for  cavity  size  at  NTS. 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


309 


Carothers:  Well,  plus  or  minus  twenty  percent. 

Duff:  There  is  some  spread.  From  eighty  to  sixty  would  get 
ninety  percent  of  the  cavities.  Now,  if  you  were  to  go  to  the  person 
doing  the  calculations  and  say,  "I  have  this  rock,  it  is  a  lava  from 
Area  1 9,  and  it  is  a  pretty  good  basaltic  material.  We  took  it  over 
to  Terra  Tek,  and  they  said  it  was  hard,  tough,  strong.  Okay,  Mr. 
Calculator  put  that  into  your  code  and  tell  me  what  the  cavity 
dimension  is  going  to  be." 

While  he's  doing  that,  somebody  from  Los  Alamos  brings  in  a 
core  taken  from  the  Sandpile  alluvium.  And  with  some  effort  Terra 
Tek  will,  in  fact,  come  up  with  a  strength  for  that.  You  give  that  to 
Mr.  Calculator  and  say,  "Tell  me  how  big  the  cavity  should  be." 

Carothers:  About  the  same  size? 

Duff:  No  way. 

Carothers:  Well,  that's  what  we  see. 

Duff:  Sure.  But  that's  not  what  we  calculate. 

Carothers:  Well,  that's  Mr.  Calculator's  fault,  isn't  it? 

Duff:  Is  it,  Jim?  Is  it  his  fault,  or  is  it  the  fact  that  the 
containment  community,  of  which  I  am  one,  and  my  hand  is  up  as 
guilty,  has  had  it's  head  in  the  proverbial  sand,  like  an  ostrich,  and 
has  been  ignoring  the  data? 

My  point  is,  we  can't  calculate  even  something  so  simple.  The 
concepts  that  we  think  apply,  namely  that  the  material  properties 
as  measured  in  the  laboratory,  and  fed  into  the  material  models  that 
we  want  to  use,  give  the  right  answers,  don't.  They  don't  give 
answers  which  are  in  good  agreement  with  our  observations.  There 
are  two  things  we  can  do  about  that.  One  of  them  is  we  could  say 
we  didn't  calculate  it  right.  Another  one  is,  we  could  wonder  if  our 
model  is  wrong.  Maybe  we're  not  thinking  about  the  problem  right. 
What  I'm  suggesting  for  consideration  here  is  that  we're  not 
thinking  about  it  right. 

And  I  have  a  piece  of  evidence.  Let's  consider  Pile  Driver. 
That  was  an  experiment  done  in  granite.  The  strength  of  that 
granite,  measured  in  the  usual  Terra  Tek  or  Livermore  manner,  I 
think  turned  out  to  be  eighty  kilobars.  It  is  an  extremely  strong, 
competent  rock.  You  put  that  into  a  code  like  TENSOR  at 
Livermore,  or  TOODY,  or  STAR  at  Pac  Tech,  or  CRAM  here,  or 


310 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


SKIPPER  here,  and  you  get  a  very  small  cavity  radius.  And  you  get 
a  number  of  other  observables  related  to  stresses  and  velocities. 
You  get  certain  predictions.  Then  you  ask,  "What  is  the  data?"  The 
data  is  quite  different. 

Norton  Rimer  is  one  person  who  has  had  reasonable  success 
trying  to  fit  a  material  model  to  the  Pile  Driver  experience,  from  first 
principles.  He  started  with  an  explosion  in  a  rock  whose  properties 
he  defined,  and  made  sure  that  he  got  the  particle  velocities  and  the 
stresses  that  were  measured.  In  order  to  do  that  he  had  to  use  what 
he  called  an  effective  stress  model.  In  other  words,  he  said,  "The 
strength  of  the  rock  is  not  even  to  a  first  approximation  what  Terra 
Tek  measured."  Its  strength  is  related  to  the  fluid  pressures  which 
you  generate  in  the  little  fractures.  The  point  is,  it  was  the 
inhomogeneities  in  the  rock,  and  not  the  rock  itself,  which  were 
central  to  an  effective  description.  Effective  means  we  had  a  model 
which  at  least  agreed  with  the  observations.  The  straightforward 
calculation  that  we  would  make  the  way  DNA,  or  Los  Alamos,  or 
Livermore  ordinarily  treats  the  problem  doesn't  come  close.  The 
code  is  probably  okay;  that's  just  F  =  ma,  usually.  And  if  one  has 
done  his  job  right  on  certain  test  problems  you  can  believe  that  F 
=  ma,  and  the  code  is  computing  that. 

But  I  want  to  emphasize  this  point  again  in  connection  with  the 
cavity  radius  observations.  I  think  we  are  dealing  with  a  situation 
where  the  response  of  the  ground  to  the  explosion  is  dominated  by 
interface  slipping  characteristics.  And,  the  interface  characteristics 
are  likely  to  be  quite  different  from  the  apparent  characteristics  of 
intact  rock.  It  is  not  inconceivable  to  me  that  the  interfaces  in  hard 
rock  can  slip  more  or  less  as  easily  as  interfaces  can  in  alluvium.  This 
leads  me  to  question  the  prediction,  the  expectation,  of  a  residual 
stress  which  comes  from  simple  continuum  mechanics  codes.  There 
the  intrinsic  assumption  is  that  material  points  which  start  out  close 
together  will  end  up  close  together. 

This  assumption  leads  to  a  whole  bunch  of  conclusions,  residual 
stress  being  one  of  them.  If  the  essential  phenomena  are  governed 
by  motions  which  don't  satisfy  the  fundamental  continuum  mechan¬ 
ics  assumption,  then  I  don't  think  that  as  technical  people  we  are 
justified  in  expecting  the  predictions  of  continuum  mechanics  to 
apply. 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage  31 1 

What  this  leads  me  to  is  a  real  question  of  whether  the  very 
convenient,  very  comfortable,  appealing,  residual  stress  concept, 
which  we've  all  talked  about  for  the  last  eighteen  years,  is  more  than 
a  crutch;  more  than  a  construct  which  is  convenient,  but  which  may 
be  quite  irrelevant  to  our  real  problem.  Now,  I  don't  know  that  the 
conventional  wisdom  is  wrong.  I  am  saying  there's  a  body  of 
evidence  that  leads  me  to  question  it. 

For  the  last  several  years  there  has  been  a  damage  failure 
surface  which  goes  into  the  DNA  calculations.  A  rock  is  assumed 
to  be  damaged  by  the  shock  process,  and  its  strength  after  shock 
passage  is  less  than  it  was  before. 

Carothers:  How  damaged  unspecified,  but  damaged  in  some 

way? 

Duff:  Yes.  If  you  take  a  rock  to  Terra  Tek  and  you  squeeze  it, 
release  it,  and  then  you  squeeze  it  again,  it  will  show  less  strength 
than  it  showed  the  first  time.  It  has  been  damaged  in  some  way.  We 
have  modeled  that  kind  of  effect.  The  models  that  are  used  by  the 
DNA  community  at  the  present  time  relate  weakness  to  stress  level. 
In  other  words,  if  you  stress  a  rock  to  four  kilobars,  its  strength  is 
reduced  by,  say,  thirty  percent.  If  you  go  to  six  kilobars,  it's  forty 
percent.  A  stress  related  damage  criterion  is  used  in  the  code,  and 
that  fits  the  experimental  data  that  comes  out  of  the  laboratory.  It 
doesn't  fit  the  experimental  data  which  you  would  derive  from  core 
recovered  after  a  shot. 

That  core  is  weaker  than  would  be  expected,  on  the  basis  of  the 
existing  damage  models.  Norton  Rimer  and  Bill  Proffer  have  been 
doing  some  material  modeling  work,  and  Norton  has  looked  at  a 
different  way  of  describing  damage.  Instead  of  using  a  stress  related 
criteria,  he's  using  a  strain  related  criteria.  If  you  distort  rock  five 
percent,  to  make  up  some  numbers,  say  the  strength  goes  down  ten 
percent.  If  you  distort  it  twenty  percent,  the  strength  comes  down 
more.  He  has  developed  a  model,  which  is  very  preliminary,  in 
which  the  model  parameters  chosen  for  the  calculations  were  fitted 
to  give  the  same  results  along  a  laboratory  uniaxial  strain  load  to 
four  kilobars,  and  a  biaxial  strain  unload  as  in  the  earlier  damage 
models. 

In  other  words,  he  and  Bill  treat  the  Terra  Tek  data  in  the  same 
way.  However,  the  two  models  give  grossly  different  results  on 
laboratory  paths  to  peak  stresses  to  eight  kilobars.  The  newer  strain 


312 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


dependent  model  has  the  additional  feature  of  approximating 
laboratory  test  data  on  post-shot  damaged  samples,  whereas  the 
earlier  models  did  not.  All  of  the  parameters  for  the  calculations 
consist  of  a  single  set  of  shear-strain  parameters,  and  a  range  of 
damaged  strengths  varying  from  mush,  for  close-in,  highly  strained 
material  -  -  which  is  consistent  with  the  measurements  -  -  to 
approximately  one-half  the  virgin  strengths.  The  results  of  the 
calculations  show  a  later  rebound,  longer  duration  of  rebound,  and 
a  residual  stress  state  which  Norton  characterizes  as  marginal  for 
preventing  cavity  gases  from  moving  significant  distances  from  the 
cavity.  The  calculated  residual  stress  field  has  lower  peaks  at 
considerably  greater  ranges,  and  in  fact,  there  are  multiple  residual 
stress  peaks  that  come  out  of  these  calculations. 

The  residual  stress  concept,  as  we've  thought  about  it,  is  based 
on  relatively  simple  models  of  material  response.  Either  the 
material  is  just  strong  -  -  it's  elastic-plastic  material,  and  does  things 
as  an  elastic-plastic  material  does  -  -  or  it  is  a  material  which  degrades 
in  its  performance  it  a  particular  way  based  on  the  stress  levels 
reached.  And,  we  have  gone  from  these  calculations  to  an  intellec¬ 
tual  construct,  which  gives  us  a  framework  in  which  to  evaluate 
containment.  Norton  is  saying,  "If  I  look  at  exactly  the  same 
laboratory  data  in  a  different  way,  and  certainly  there  is  no  a-priori 
basis  for  saying  a  stress  criterion  is  better  than  a  strain  criterion  for 
describing  the  onset  of  damage,  I  get  qualitatively  different  an¬ 
swers." 

Carothers:  Tom,  for  years  people  have  lived  with  the  residual 
stress  cage  concept  as  a  measure  of  goodness,  if  you  like,  when 
calculations  are  presented.  I  have  had  difficulty  finding  anyone  who 
would  say  there  was  good  experimental  evidence  for  this  residual 
stress,  this  "containment  cage,"  in  the  field. 

Kunkle:  I  have  discussed  this  with  Fred  App  at  some  length, 
and  he  is  one  of  the  principal  modelers  of  residual  stress  fields 
around  nuclear  events.  Indeed,  he  would  very  much  like  to  have  a 
stress  profile,  or  a  pressure  sensor  record  to  work  with.  The  trouble 
is  that  the  stress  cage  occurs  in  regions  of  intense  groundshock; 
scaled  ranges  of  maybe  twenty  scaled  meters,  and  we  don't  have 
equipment  that  normally  survives  there.  Livermore  has  fielded 
some  experiments  in  an  attempt  to  look  for  the  residual  stress,  and 
I  don't  believe  they've  ever  had  a  gauge  survive  and  return 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


313 


unambiguous  pressure  measurements  that  could  be  interpreted  in 
terms  of  residual  stress.  So,  it's  a  theoretical  concept  that  we've 
never  been  able  to  validate,  but  we  don't  have,  to  my  knowledge, 
any  experimental  data  that  would  say  it's  incorrect.  A  major  factor 
in  containment  research  throughout  the  underground  test  program 
is  what  is  the  nature  of  the  so-called  "magic  membrane"  that  keeps 
all  the  gas  inside  the  cavity,  or  nearby  the  cavity. 

Carothers:  John,  did  your  early  SOC  calculations  show  a 
residual  stress  field  around  the  cavity? 

Rambo:  Our  calculations  did  show  that  rebound  phase,  but 
because  it  was  a  spherical  calculation  it  was  constantly  bouncing. 
The  wave  would  go  up  to  the  surface  and  come  back  down,  and  then 
go  back  up  again.  But,  by  and  large  you  could  see  some  differences 
in  residual  stress  if  you  had  different  strengths  in  there.  So,  it  was 
kind  of  good  enough  to  roughly  characterize  those  things,  and  if  you 
did  have  a  big  reflection  coming  in  from  the  surface,  or  the  edge  of 
a  layer  that  was  close  in,  which  was  also  spherical,  sometimes  that 
would  make  a  difference  in  what  you  saw,  even  in  a  spherical  sense. 

And  we  thought,  "Well,  you  know,  it's  kind  of  conservative 
because  these  reflections  come  back  rather  strongly,  and  if  you  can 
survive  it  as  a  sphere,  then  maybe  you  can  survive  it  in  a  real 
situation  where  the  layers  are  flat  and  not  reflecting  quite  so 
strongly."  That  was  the  logic  behind  how  we  started  in  that  area, 
and  we  did  do  a  lot  of  calculations  which  we  got  up  in  front  of  the 
CEP  and  presented,  showing  these  things. 

Carothers:  There  are  people  who  say  there  is  no  experimental 
evidence  that  we  have,  that  shows  a  rebound  and  a  stress  cage  on 
an  actual  shot.  Maybe  you  do  get  stress  fields  over  here,  but  they 
might  be  bigger  than  you  calculate,  and  over  there  they  might  be 
smaller,  or  non-existent,  because  of  the  various  beds,  and  layers, 
and  faults,  and  blocks,  and  so  on.  Could  you  comment  on  that? 

Rambo:  You  said  we've  never  measured  a  residual  stress,  and 
I  say,  "Well,  is  that  because  we  haven't  been  able  to  measure  it 
effectively,  or  is  it  that  the  measurements  that  did  take  place  didn't 
show  anything?" 


314 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Well,  rarely  do  you  look.  When  you  do,  the 
instruments  don't  survive.  Or  it's  been  a  long  time  later,  and  that 
stress  field  has  decayed.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  very  difficult  experimental 
problem. 

Rambo:  There  was  some  data  from  Orkney,  a  Livermore  shot 
up  in  area  10.  This  event  did  have  gauges  that  would  supposedly 
measure  the  hoop  stress  and  the  radial  stress,  in  two  different 
locations,  and  the  instruments  survived.  In  fact,  you  could  probably 
run  them  today  if  you  wanted  to.  I  ran  a  1-D  calculation  to  see  if 
I  got  anything  that  looked  like  what  they  measured.  The  calculation 
that  I  did,  going  through  my  normal  procedure  of  guessing  things 
about  the  material  properties,  showed  residual  stress.  The  gauges 
also  showed  what  looked  like  a  residual  stress,  but  not  to  the  degree 
I  calculated  it.  The  timing  was  about  right,  but  the  magnitude  of  it 
seemed  to  be  less  than  I  calculated.  I  think  that  what's  happening 
out  in  the  real  world  is  that  there  may  not  be  as  much  residual  stress 
as  I  calculate. 

You  can  get  into  arguments  about,  "Well,  was  that  real  data, 
or  are  there  other  things  that  went  on?"  That  argument  goes  for 
almost  everything  we've  measured  in  the  field.  My  point  is,  maybe 
what  I'm  doing  isn't  completely  erroneous.  Over  the  years  I've 
come  to  put  a  lot  of  faith  in  the  shear  strength  in  my  models,  as  being 
part  of  what  takes  place  in  terms  of  this  rebound,  and  how  good  it 
is  and  how  good  it  isn't.  In  looking  at  a  lot  of  the  logs,  where  I've 
tried  to  divine  the  shear  strength  from  looking  at  the  velocity  logs, 
I  get  a  feel  that  the  shear  strength  varys  all  over  the  place.  It's  one 
of  those  things  that  comes  and  goes,  and  comes  and  goes.  You  can 
look  at  density  logs  and  they  don't  look  the  same  as  what  we  might 
be  experiencing  terms  of  shear  strength. 

What  I  think  is  out  there  is  not  homogeneous,  and  I  agree  with 
that  completely.  I  think  that  there  are  areas  where  the  residual 
stress  may  look  a  lot  better  than  in  other  areas.  It  may  have  a  lot 
to  do  with  why  you  get  cavities  that  are  not  spherical,  and  why  you 
may  go  in  one  direction,  even  horizontally,  or  off  to  one  particular 
side,  and  you  don't  see  the  things  that  you  see  in  a  calculation.  And 
that's  because  of  the  limited  amount  of  information  I  have,  to  do 
what  I  have  to  do  in  terms  of  averaging  properties  and  organizing  the 
materials.  I'm  looking  for  generic  effects  when  I  do  these  things, 
and  weaknesses.  But  I  have  to  also  say  that  there  are  some  cases 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


315 


where  we've  modeled  a  generic  weakness,  and  we  may  have  seen  the 
same  thing  in  the  field.  I  say,  "may",  because  the  statistics  are  very 
poor. 

There  are  things  like  Baneberry,  which  we  modeled,  that  didn't 
show  residual  stress.  There  was  a  lot  of  evidence  that  it  didn't  have 
anything  like  that.  For  instance,  it  leaked  out  of  the  ground.  More 
recently  there  was  the  Barnwell  event,  which  looked  calculationally 
like  it  had  residual  stress  problems.  And  after  the  shot  there  was 
radiation  high  in  the  stemming.  There  was  Nash,  which  I  did  run 
some  calculations  on  and  compared  to  the  Bourbon  event.  Nash 
looked  worse  than  Bourbon,  and  Nash  leaked  but  Bourbon  con¬ 
tained.  That  is  probably  the  only  evidence  of  things  actually  having 
happened  that  I  calculated. 

The  statistics  are  very  poor.  There  have  been  cases  where  I've 
calculated  things  that  showed  residual  stress,  and  they  leaked,  or 
had  some  difficulties.  And  there  have  been  some  cases  where  I  did 
a  calculation  which  showed  that  didn't  have  any  residual  stress,  and 
they  contained  just  fine.  But  there's  one  thread  that  seems  to 
wander  through  these  calculations  of  residual  stress,  although  the 
statistics,  as  1  said  earlier,  are  terrible.  That  is,  there's  usually 
something  else  wrong  with  the  event  besides  the  residual  stress.  On 
Baneberry  there  was  lots  clay  and  lots  of  water.  On  Barnwell  there 
was  also  quite  a  bit  of  water.  On  Nash  there  was  a  lot  of  C02,  a 
non-condensable  gas.  Those  things  may  play  a  factor.  If  you  know 
you  haven't  got  any  residual  stress,  it  may  be  a  secondary  thing  that 
is  really  important.  To  draw  a  conclusion  out  of  three  or  four  events 
like  that  is  a  very  poor  style,  but  nevertheless  in  this  business,  I  keep 
looking  for  a  thread. 

Carothers:  Russ  Duff  has  said  that  the  calculations  are  not 
wrong,  but  the  world  in  which  you  work  is  not  the  kind  of  world  that 
the  calculations  calculate.  That's  the  business  of  the  inhomogene¬ 
ities,  the  layers  of  different  rocks,  the  three  dimensionality,  possibly 
block  motions.  If  you  only  had  the  right  kind  of  world,  the 
calculations  would  be  just  fine,  but  you're  applying  them  to  a  world 
that  doesn't  exist. 

Rambo:  I  would  like  to  temper  that  comment  a  bit.  There  are 
some  areas  where  the  non-homogeneities  are  more  apparent  than 
others.  Take  the  tunnels,  where  you're  in  stronger  rock,  and  there 
are  lots  of  fracture  planes.  They  have  indeed  seen  motion  along 


316 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


these  planes,  and  the  calculators  that  I  talk  with  say,  "We  just  can't 
model  that  sort  of  thing  yet.  Or  maybe  we  will  never  be  able  to 
model  that  kind  of  thing."  Those  fracture  planes  may  play  a  strong 
role  in  what  eventually  ends  up  as  the  non-residual  stress,  or  the 
residual  stress  being  taken  away.  But  as  you  get  down  to  the  Flat, 
the  differences  in  the  strength  are  not  quite  as  different.  In  the  Flat 
we're  talking  about  more  of  a  soil  type  of  material,  but  still  there  are 
those  areas  that  have  hard  rocks  and  porous  materials. 

My  experience  is  in  looking  at  drilling  rates.  In  the  Flat,  drilling 
tends  to  go  fairly  quickly  through  most  of  the  tuffs  -  -  not  all  of  them, 
but  most  of  them.  I  get  a  different  impression  from  that  than  what 
I  see  up  on  the  Mesa,  in  looking  at  the  strengths  that  are  measured 
in  the  tunnels.  It's  just  a  bias  that  I've  picked  up  over  the  years,  in 
looking  at,  and  becoming  more  aware  of  what's  happening  in  the 
tunnels.  A  calculator  tends  to  look  at  things  a  little  bit  differently, 
because  he's  looking  for,  or  trying  to  divine,  properties  that  have  to 
do  with  containment,  or  those  he  thinks  have  to  do  with  containment. 

Another  answer  to  this  question  about  residual  stress  is  that 
many  of  the  people  who  say  there  isn't  anything  such  as  residual 
stress  are  talking  about  shots  in  the  tunnels.  That's  the  discussion 
that  seems  to  be  going  on  now.  One  of  the  things  that  has  come 
through  this  whole  business  is  that,  in  the  lore,  low  yield  events  have 
more  trouble  containing  than  high  yield  events.  And,  the  people  in 
the  tunnels  are  always  shooting  in  a  subkiloton  to  maybe  less  than 
two  kilotons  range,  for  the  most  part.  They  have  done  ten  kilotons 
shots,  but  the  low  yield  events  seem  to  be  showing  most  of  the 
residual  stress  problems.  Or,  most  of  the  events  where  they've 
leaked  radioactivity  have  been  in  the  low  yield  range. 

To  a  first  degree  I  try  to  put  layers  in  the  model  at  different 
strengths,  but  there  may  be  things  that  we  don't  know  are  there,  or 
cracks,  or  the  strength  properties  we  may  think  are  all  one  strength 
may  not  be.  My  argument  is  that  you  see  more  of  this  kind  of  thing 
in  the  tunnels  than  you  do  out  in  the  Flat.  My  feeling  is  you  ought 
to  see  it  where  you  have  relatively  high  strength  rock  with  cracks, 
and  with  lots  of  weakness  around  the  shot  point.  Those  things  are 
going  to  move,  and  they  do  move;  in  the  tunnels  they  can  see  that 
they  have. 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


317 


Although  we  can  hit  those  kinds  of  things  occasionally  in  the 
Flat,  I  believe  we're  in  more  of  a  soil-like  material  where  the 
difference  in  strengths  between  the  material  and  the  fracture  zones 
is  less.  So,  the  block  motion  is  not  going  to  be  quite  so  strong. 

Carothers:  How  long  do  you  think  the  residual  stress  stays 
there? 

Rambo:  In  looking  at  Billy  Hudson's  cavity  pressure  measure¬ 
ments,  that  pressure  seems  to  decay  rather  quickly  for  a  half  minute 
or  a  minute.  Then  it  seems  to  decay  very  slowly.  I'm  saying  you 
can  only  have  cavity  pressure  if  there's  something  there  to  hold  it, 
so  I'm  making  an  association  between  the  cavity  pressure  that's 
sitting  there,  and  some  sort  of  residual  stress  that  holds  it  in.  Your 
question  hasn't  got  an  easy  answer  to  it. 

Carothers:  What  mechanism  would  you  hypothesize  that 
would  allow  or  cause  a  relaxation  of  the  residual  stress? 

Rambo:  I  think  there  could  be  constant  readjusting.  First  of 
all,  the  cavity  pressure  is  likely  to  decay  away  because  there  are 
cracks  and  porosity  for  the  gases  to  go  through.  As  this  happens  I 
think  the  pressure  against  the  cavity  walls  becomes  less,  and  the 
materials  start  to  rearrange  themselves  in  terms  of  stress  fields.  You 
hear  this  in  the  geophone  record  as  a  constant  rumbling  that's  goes 
on  after  the  shot,  before  collapse  takes  place.  I  think  the  cooling 
can  even  bring  some  of  the  cavity  gases  into  condensing  to  the  point 
where  the  cavity  is  at  less  than  atmospheric  pressure,  and  that  has 
certainly  been  noticed  on  some  shots. 

I  think  this  relieving  mechanism  is  just  the  normal  part  of  the 
collapse  process  that's  taking  place.  I  don't  understand  it  very  well; 

I  can  understand  how  you  can  get  pressure  decaying,  and  causing 
some  of  that.  What  happens  after  that  is  just  mysterious  in  my  mind, 
because  I've  never  heard  any  explanation  of  it.  It  has  to  do  with 
things  like  what's  the  strength  of  various  blocks,  and  this,  that,  and 
the  other  thing.  It's  the  mysterious  part  of  this  business,  that  we 
have  no  knowledge  of,  that  sometimes  has  a  lot  to  do  with  the 
success  or  failure  of  a  shot.  That  was  Agrini  and  Riola.  There  are 
mechanisms  out  there  that  have  nothing  to  do  with  residual  stress 
or  what's  in  the  cavity,  and  that  is  the  risk  factor  which  we  can't  do 
much  about  that  goes  along  with  a  shot. 


318 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Mr  Rimer,  from  things  you  have  said,  I  take  it  that 
you  believe  in  the  residual  stress  field. 

Rimer:  I  believe  in  it  for  relatively  homogeneous  materials. 
The  problem  is,  on  nuclear  events,  we  have  never  successfully 
measured  residual  compressive  hoop  stresses.  There  are  one  or  two 
measurements  where  we  put  the  gauge  side-on,  and  we've  gotten 
records  that  last  a  long  time.  There  are  funny  things  that  I've  seen 
when  you  compare  those  records  to  a  radial  stress  record  at  the  same 
location. 

On  small  scale  experiments,  like  the  SRI  grout  spheres,  we've 
actually  seen  the  effects  of  residual  stress.  There  was  a  tube  in  those 
spheres  that  was  to  connect  to  the  cavity  after  the  explosion,  so  we 
could  hydrofracture  from  the  cavity.  Well,  once  there  was  a  break 
in  the  tube,  and  instead  of  going  ail  the  way  to  the  cavity,  it  broke 
somewhere  in  between.  When  we  pumped  in  that  dyed  fluid,  it  went 
all  around  the  cavity,  right  where  the  dip  in  the  residual  stress  field 
was  supposed  to  be.  It  didn't  go  into  the  cavity.  It  found  the  easiest 
path,  and  that's  where  it  went. 

On  HE  tests  Carl  Smith  has  measured  very  long  time  stresses. 
Unfortunately,  these  are  the  radial  ones,  the  ones  that  don't  matter 
too  much.  We  need  the  hoop  sresses.  It  is  a  strong  containment 
diagnostics  goal  of  DNA  to  try  to  measure  these  residual  stresses. 

Bass:  You're  not  liable  to  see  residual  stress  show  up  on  a  radial 
stress  gauge,  and  that's  where  all  the  measurements  are  made  to  try 
to  find  it.  You  can  see  it  on  a  hoop  stress  gauge  if  the  hoop  stress 
gauge  lasts  long  enough.  Those  measurements  have  not  been  very 
successful,  and  they  are  too  far  out. 

Carothers:  A  criticism  I  have  heard  of  those  measurements  is, 
"Convince  me  that  you're  measuring  stress  and  not  strain." 

Bass:  I  won't  argue  that  point  at  all.  Especially  when  you  get 
down  to  the  range  where  you  can  make  the  measurement.  When 
you  get  below  the  shear  strength  of  the  tuff,  which  is  three-tenths 
of  a  kilobar,  I  don't  know  what's  going  on,  and  I  don't  know  what 
we're  measuring.  I  think  we're  measuring  the  pressure  component, 
rather  than  a  stress  component  when  we  get  below  three-tenths  of 
a  kilobar.  And  we've  got  a  lot  of  information  saying  that's  the  case, 
because  the  curve  bends  off  the  wrong  way  when  you  make  those 
measurements.  This  falloff  steepens  when  you  get  below  three- 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage  319 

tenths  of  a  kilobar.  In  my  compilations  of  data,  which  are  used  sort 
of  as  the  bible  of  what  ground  shock  exists  where,  I  say  don't  draw 
the  line  below  twice  the  strength  of  material,  because  we  don't  know 
what  we're  doing  in  that  region.  We  just  flat  don't  know. 

Rimer:  On  Misty  Echo  and  Mission  Ghost  we,  preshot, 
hydrofractured  the  rock  to  get  the  in-situ  stresses.  Then  post-shot 
we  hydrofractured  it  again.  Observations  in  G  tunnel  by  Carl  Smith 
on  HE  events  showed  that  the  directions  of  the  minimum  stresses  are 
oriented  differently  post-shot  than  they  were  pre-shot.  That  change 
remains  for  many  months;  the  magnitudes  of  the  stresses  don't 
remain,  but  the  directions  do.  We  found  a  change  in  direction  on 
Mission  Ghost.  The  magnitudes  though,  where  we  predict  two 
hundred  bars,  they  were  sixty  bars,  but  they  were  in  the  right  spot. 
The  directions  were  changed,  and  the  largest  changes  we  measured 
with  the  post-shot  hydrofractures  were  near  where  the  largest 
residual  stresses  were  supposed  to  be. 

Carothers:  People  have  talked  about  the  residual  stress  as 
unloading,  or  relaxing,  either  due  to  migration  of  water  out  of  the 
pores,  or  due  to  creep,  but  they  don't  talk  about  very  long  time 
scales.  Certainly  not  months. 

Rimer:  Minutes.  We  have  tried  to  calculate  this.  Pac  Tech  has 
used  the  standard  creep  model,  with  data  from  lab  tests  at  Terra  Tek 
on  tuffs.  We've  tried  that  way,  and  we've  also  tried  with  a  pore  fluid 
migration  model,  with  detailed  effective  stress  concepts.  It's 
difficult;  we  can  make  those  codes  do  almost  anything,  because  we 
haven't  tied  down  the  material  properties,  the  models  of  the  rock, 
especially  after  a  ground  shock  has  passed  through.  We  can't  give, 
from  those  calculations,  a  precise  time  frame  for  it,  but  I  would  say 
it's  minutes.  Because  we  don't  know  how  to  tie  the  calculations 
down,  on  every  event  we're  still  trying  to  measure  residual  stress. 
But  I  would  say  that  stress  field  relaxes  in  minutes. 

Carothers:  It's  hard  to  believe  that  in  minutes  there  would  be 
enough  fluid  migration  to  do  very  much.  The  permeability  is  rather 
low,  the  pressure  gradients  aren't  all  that  high,  and  the  fluid  has  to 
move  a  fair  distance.  The  residual  stress  field,  if  it  does  exist,  isn't 
as  thin  as  a  foot. 


320 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Rimer:  No.  It  depends  on  the  yield  of  the  device,  but  it's  in 
the  range  of  many  meters.  But  that's  another  thing  we  don't  know 
-  -  how  far  the  fluid  has  to  move  to  relieve  these  stresses. 

Carothers:  Dan,  let  me  make  a  summary  statement  that  I  think 
represents  what  a  number  of  people  have  said  about  residual  stress 
calculations.  People  who  calculate  shocks  going  out,  and  so  on,  are 
using  the  right  physics,  and  their  codes  are  okay,  and  the  calcula¬ 
tions  are  fine.  However,  when  they  do  that  they're  always  assuming 
a  homogeneous  medium.  When  you  look  at  the  grout  sphere 
experiments,  or  the  work  that  Carl  Smith  did  -  -  Carl  searched 
around  in  G  tunnel  for  homogeneous  blocks  in  which  to  do  his 
experiments  -  -  those  are  homogeneous  media.  Unfortunately,  the 
world  isn't  like  that.  There  are  layers,  and  cracks,  and  fractures,  and 
so  you  don't  actually  know  what  the  material  properties  are,  on  the 
scale  that  you're  going  to  be  calculating. 

Patch:  Sure.  One  of  the  problems  is  basically  what  you're 
referring  to,  which  is  the  geostructure  -  -  fractures,  and  bedding 
planes,  and  all  that  stuff. 

It  would  be  surprising  if  you  didn't  run  into  some  perturbation 
of  this  so-called  stress  field  that's  formed  around  the  cavity.  One 
of  the  problems  that  we  certainly  have  is  that  we  don't  have  a  direct 
measurement  of  it.  We've  been  trying  and  trying  to  get  a  direct 
measure  of  the  residual  stress  field  -  -  what  the  stress  state  is,  after 
the  shot  is  over,  for  a  real  shot  in  a  real  medium,  in  more  than  one 
place.  That  is  certainly  a  very  high  priority  goal  in  the  DNA 
containment  diagnostic  program. 

Carothers:  And  that's  a  measurement  that  is  very  hard  to  do. 

Patch:  Yes,  very  hard  to  do.  The  second  thing  that  has  given 
us  a  great  deal  of  concern  is  the  time  dependence  of  this  stress  state. 
We  think  we  know  when  it  sets  up.  We're  pretty  uncertain, 
unfortunately,  what  its  actual  magnitude  is,  and  surely  don't  know 
when  it  goes  away.  There  seems  to  be  a  body  of  evidence  that 
suggests  it  can  go  away  pretty  darn  quickly. 

Terra  Tek  did  some  work  back  probably  in  the  mid-eighties, 
trying  to  simulate  creep  for  loaded  tuffs.  It  was  an  outgrowth  of 
these  questions  and  issues  that  came  out  of  the  SRI  program.  When 
SRI  fired  these  little  shots,  and  then  subsequently  fractured  them, 
it  made  a  difference  when  they  fractured  the  cavity.  If  they  did  it 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


321 


very  quickly,  they  found  very  high  fracture  resistances.  It  took 
measured  pressures  as  high  as  five  or  six  thousand  psi  in  trying  to 
break  out  of  those  little  explosively  formed  cavities.  That  seemed 
to  be  pretty  strong  evidence  of  a  residual  stress  field,  since  the 
spheres  would  only  hold  about  fifteen  hundred  if  you  just  fractured 
a  natural  cavity.  But  if  you  waited,  the  fracture  pressure  that  the 
cavity  could  hold  dropped  with  time,  and  it  dropped  very  quickly. 
A  matter  of  half  a  minute  made  a  difference  -  -  it  might  bring  it  from 
six  thousand  down  to  two  thousand  or  so. 

Carothers:  What  do  you  think  causes  that  to  happen? 

Patch:  There  are  two  schools  of  thought.  One  is  that  it's 
basically  the  pore  fluid  migrating  down  the  pressure  gradient. 
Conceptually,  oversimplifying,  it  carries  the  stress  with  it.  The  fluid 
flows,  and  it's  under  the  highest  pressure  where  the  stress  is  the 
highest,  and  it  goes  away,  relieving  the  stress.  And  that  kind  of 
mechanism  scales.  The  bigger  the  shot  the  longer  the  time  it  takes; 
it  all  scales  as  the  cube  root  of  the  yield. 

The  other  possibility  is  that  it's  creep,  or  a  stress  relaxation 
mechanism  of  a  semi-classical  type;  a  material  that  is  loaded  has  a 
stress  difference  on  it,  and  it  tries  to  flow  in  a  quasi-plastic  kind  of 
way.  That,  in  some  sense,  is  a  point  property,  and  it's  independent 
on  the  size  of  the  medium.  And  so,  these  two  mechanisms,  in  terms 
of  their  time  dependence,  are  very  different.  The  implication  is  that 
for  a  nuclear  shot,  if  the  stress  field  were  flowing  out  as  a  pore  fluid 
effect,  it  would  take  a  very  long  period  of  time,  because  you're 
trying  to  migrate  fluid  down  what  is  a  shallow  gradient  in  terms  of 
psi  per  foot,  and  you  have  to  move  a  lot  of  water.  The  other 
mechanism  is  independent  of  that.  It  just  tries  to  equilibrate  stress 
differences.  Each  little  microelement  of  the  material,  if  you  will,  is 
unhappy  and  readjusts  it's  grains,  or  whatever  it  wants  to  do  to 
accommodate  that. 

I  have  been  more  of  the  creep  mechanism  school,  myself.  The 
reason,  as  much  as  any  is  that  some  folks  who  are  smarter  than  I  took 
a  look  at  what  would  happen  if  you  took  an  stressed  material,  and 
had  the  pore  fluid  flow  out  of  it.  Unfortunately,  the  stress  is  not  like 
colored  dye,  and  the  psi's  don't  flow  with  the  fluid.  What  happens 
is  that  the  material  tends  to  transfer  the  load;  part  of  it  comes  out 


322 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


with  the  fluid,  and  part  of  it  is  taken  up  by  the  matrix  of  the  material. 
And  then  the  issue  was,  does  it  take  up  a  lot  of  it,  or  a  little  of  it. 
My  recollection  is  that  it  didn't  really  cancel  out  very  well. 

Ristvet:  If  we  believe  some  of  our  recent  DNA  data,  yes,  we 
have  residual  stress,  but  it's  very  small.  I  think  some  of  the 
measurements  we  made  on  the  last  three  events  kind  of  suggest  that 
yes,  the  residual  stress  is  there,  but  the  magnitude  is  less  than  the 
cavity  pressure.  What's  interesting  is  we  are  now  calculating  those 
small  numbers  using  a  discrete  element  code  that  allows  certain 
block  motions  to  occur. 

We're  getting  almost  to  the  point  where  we  can  make  some 
measurements.  We're  finally  getting  smart  enough  about  how  to 
make  the  measurements,  after  twenty  some  events  where  we  failed. 
And  everybody  knew  what  the  problem  was;  it's  called  cable 
survivability.  So  we  went  out  and  made  the  hardest  cables  we  could, 
and  I  give  credit  to  SRI,  and  in  part  to  Carl  Keller  who  modified  SRI's 
design,  and  then  to  Sandia  who  even  made  it  better.  What  they  have 
developed  is  this  wire  rope  wrapped  cable.  In  the  tuff  or  alluvium 
I  think  it  will  work  just  great,  because  it  can  cut  through  the  medium, 
in  a  sense,  because  it  is  so  rigid  in  comparison,  and  yet  it  can  protect 
the  soft  conductors  inside. 

Carothers:  Norton  Rimer  has  said  that  as  far  as  he  was 
concerned  the  best  location  for  testing  a  device  was  in  a  weak  rock. 
If  you  have  a  strong  rock,  like  granite,  you  will  get  a  small  cavity, 
high  pressure,  and  a  lot  of  tensile  fractures.  He  said  he  liked  a  nice 
soft,  forgiving  rock. 

App:  Same  here.  I  believe  that.  Our  current  models  of  the 
ashflow  tuffs  at  the  Nevada  Test  Site  suggest  that  you  get  a  stronger 
residual  stress  field  in  them  than  in  other  rocks.  For  example,  you 
don't  get  a  lot  of  tensile  failure.  The  failure  is  predominately  shear 
failure;  the  material  is  not  physically  pulling  apart.  Also  there  is  a 
lot  of  rebound  for  the  formation  of  a  residual  stress  field. 
Calculationally,  the  residual  stress  is  stronger  than  you  get  for  a 
weaker  material  like  alluvium,  or  for  a  denser  material  like  welded 
tuff  or  lava.  I  think  what  Norton  said  is  right. 

Lava  is  strong  in  shear,  and  it  is  always  jointed.  You're  not 
going  to  find  many  rocks  that  are  not  jointed.  The  shear  strength 
might  be  quite  high,  but  the  effective  tensile  strength  is  zero;  during 


The  Residual  Stress  Cage 


323 


the  outward  cavity  growth  the  cracks  open  up.  During  rebound  they 
close  down  again,  but  during  that  hysteresis  period  when  the  cracks 
are  opening  and  closing  the  mechanism  isn't  there  to  create  a 
residual  stress  field,  because  residual  stress  formation  depends  on 
shear  failure. 

When  the  material  is  failing  in  shear,  as  soon  as  the  rebound 
starts  you  immediately  start  forming  the  compressive,  elastic  stresses 
that  comprise  the  residual  stress  field.  So,  there's  a  very  basic 
phenomenological  difference  between  a  strong  rock  and  what  I  will 
call  a  medium  strength  rock  such  as  ashflow  tuff.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  you  go  to  a  very  weak  rock,  like  a  Baneberry  clay,  there's  not 
enough  strength  to  support  any  kind  of  shear,  or  residual  stress. 

If  you  make  a  plot  of  calculated  peak  residual  stress  versus 
strength  of  the  rock,  it  starts  out  very  low,  increases  with  increasing 
strength,  hits  a  peak,  and  then  decreases  with  increasing  strength. 
The  way  the  models  are  currently  set  up,  it  appears  that  the  ashflow 
tuffs  are  almost  ideal  for  the  formation  of  a  strong  residual  stress 
field.  The  fact  that  the  alluvium  is  very  weak  doesn't  matter  that 
much  because  the  water  table  is  below  it,  so  it's  dry,  and  there  is  a 
lot  of  volume  to  take  up  the  gases,  even  if  it  doesn't  form  much  of 
a  residual  stress  cage. 


324 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


325 


12 

Hydrofractures 

As  discussed  in  the  preceding  chapter,  what  might  be  called  the 
conventional  view,  and  the  conventional  calculations  assume  a 
homogeneous  medium,.  Energy  is  deposited  in  that  medium,  and 
there  is  a  spherical  shockwave  that  goes  out.  The  properties  of  the 
medium  lead  to  a  rebound  of  the  material,  and  to  the  formation 
around  the  cavity  of  a  stressed  region  which  is  called  the  residual 
stress  cage,  or  containment  cage.  The  stress  in  the  rocks  in  that 
region  is  high  enough  that  the  pressure  in  the  cavity  cannot  drive  gas 
or  fractures  through  it.  In  this  view,  the  residual  stress  is  an 
important  phenomenon  in  containing  the  gases  produced  by  the 
explosion. 

There  is  another  view,  which  might  be  expressed  as  follows: 
there  are  pieces  of  evidence  which  are  hard  to  reconcile  with  the 
conventional  model.  There  might  or  might  not  be  a  stress  cage,  but 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  such  a  concept  could  be  a  wrong  road.  The 
principal  mechanism  that  accounts  for  containment  could  be  the 
release  of  cavity  pressure  through  fractures  driven  from  the  cavity. 
Because  of  the  nature  of  the  material  the  fractures  don’t  propagate 
far  enough  to  reach  the  surface,  although  they  might  through  preex¬ 
isting  weaknesses  such  as  fractures  or  cracks.  Perhaps  the  leading 
proponent  of  this  view  was  Russell  Duff. 

Duff:  There  is  a  very  considerable  body  of  evidence  about 
containment  mechanisms  that  has  been  around  for  a  long  time,  and 
I  don't  think  our  community  has  responded  to  that  evidence  in  a 
responsible  scientific  fashion,  in  that  the  response  has  not  been  as 
true  to  the  scientific  method  as  we  might  like  to  think.  There  is  an 
alternative  containment  concept  to  the  residual  stress  cage  concept, 
and  that's  the  work  of  Griffith  and  Nilsen  on  fracture-related 
containment  mechanisms. 

Carothers:  At  the  CEP  you  have  talked  about  calculations 
which  indicated  fractures  go  out  very  quickly,  but  there's  so  much 
cooling  to  the  walls,  and  so  much  pressure  needed  to  drive  them, 
that  at  most  they  only  go  a  hundred  meters  or  so.  In  this  picture 
of  containment,  as  I  understand  it,  the  hypothetical  stress  cage  has 


326 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


little  to  do  with  it.  There  are  fractures,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
more  fractures  there  are  the  better  it  is,  because  they  lead  to 
cooling,  and  to  a  decrease  in  the  pressure  in  the  cavity. 

Duff:  I  can  provide  a  piece  of  pretty  good  evidence  to  support 
the  fracture  argument.  Let's  talk  about  Red  Hot.  This  was  an  event 
which  occurred  in  a  hemispherical  cavity.  The  yield  was  relatively 
small.  We  have  calculated  the  expected  cavity  expansion  from  this 
event,  and  it's  about  three  or  four  meters.  What's  observed  is 
roughly  one  meter. 

When  you  have  a  twenty-three  meter  start  and  then  you  go  one 
more,  or  you  go  three  or  four  more,  that  is  a  big  relative  volume 
difference.  From  23  meters  to  24  meters  is  a  little  bit  of  expansion, 
like  12  or  13  percent  in  volume.  From  23  meters  to  27  or  28 
meters  is  a  lot  of  expansion,  like  60  to  80  percent.  What 
mechanism  can  make  the  cavity  not  expand?  Well,  one  obvious 
thing  is  that  the  pressure  went  away.  When  would  the  pressure  have 
to  go  away  to  make  the  cavity  expansion  only  be  one  meter  instead 
of  three  or  four?  The  answer  is  five  or  ten  milliseconds.  Now,  that 
is  so  fast  that  whatever  happened  did  so  inside  of  any  time  frame  in 
which  residual  stress  fields  would  be  set  up;  that  would  be  more  like 
a  hundred  millisecond  time  frame. 

So,  how  can  nature  get  rid  of  the  pressure  from  an  explosion 
in  ten  milliseconds?  Nilsen  looked  at  this  problem,  and  looked  at 
the  fracture  system  that  you  might  expect  from  such  an  explosion 
in  such  a  cavity.  He  used  his  code  called  FAST,  which  is  a  calculating 
system  which  is  related  in  many  ways  to  analytic  treatments.  He 
came  up  with  an  answer  that  it  would  require  fractures  from  the 
cavity  at  roughly  three  meter  intervals  to  dump  the  pressure. 

We  reentered  Red  Hot,  and  it  happened  that  the  reentry  drift 
intersected  a  fracture;  you  can  see  it  in  the  floor  of  the  reentry  drift. 
It  goes  out  about  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  from  the  cavity  boundary 
and  stops,  so  it  wasn't  driven  for  a  very  long  time,  but  it  was  driven 
quite  energetically.  It  is  a  very  narrow  crack  for  the  last  few  feet, 
but  it  is  quite  a  large  fracture  at  the  cavity  boundary.  There  is  a 
grapefruit  sized  hunk  of  rock  in  this  glass-filled  fracture,  and  that 
rock  came  from  some  place  far  away.  So,  there  was  at  least  one 
fracture  on  Red  Hot.  It  didn't  go  very  far,  probably  because  the 
pressure  didn't  last  very  long.  Let's  say  the  pressure  didn't  last  very 
long  because  there  was  a  system  of  fractures,  lots  of  fractures. 


Hydrofractures 


327 


Nilsen  said  you  could  kill  the  pressure  if  you  had  fractures 
every  three  meters.  So,  joe  LaComb  drilled  a  hole  parallel  to  the 
flat  face  of  the  cavity,  and  I  believe  he  encountered  fourteen 
fractures  along  the  length  of  this  hole.  On  average  they  were  three 
meters  apart.  So,  I  think  that  there  is  a  net  of  at  least  circumstantial 
evidence  which  says  Red  Hot  was  contained  because  a  whole  system 
of  fractures  developed  and  they  dumped  the  pressure  on  a  very  fast 
time  scale. 

Ristvet:  There  was  an  another  hypothesis,  which  was  that  the 
crater  threw  a  lot  of  cold  debris  into  the  cavity.  When  we  looked 
at  the  crater  through  the  drilling,  with  the  TV  cameras,  it  was  almost 
exactly  as  S-Cubed  and  myself  had  predicted.  I  did  it  empirically, 
and  S-Cubed  did  it  calculationaliy.  The  throwout  was  very  small, 
because  the  high  pressures  in  the  cavity  just  didn't  let  anything  get 
thrown  out.  You  have  to  have  extremely  high  ejection  velocities  to 
move  through  that  overpressure. 

That  also  says  something  else  about  the  timing,  which  helped 
validate  the  calculations  too.  Those  high  pressures  lasted  for  only 
a  few  tens  of  miliseconds,  and  then  they  dropped  very,  very  fast. 
That  was  probably  during  the  time  those  short,  stubby  fractures 
formed. 

Now,  we  did  see,  on  Red  Hot  reentry,  two  steam  type 
hydrofracs,  the  kind  with  no  glass,  or  very  little  glass  associated  with 
them.  They  went  up  above  the  Deep  Well  access  drift  to  the  base 
of  the  vitric.  They  follow  the  in-situ  stress  field  perfectly.  Those 
two  are  not  well  explained.  They  had  to  occur  at  a  very  early  time, 
while  the  pressure  was  still  up,  and  probably  the  other  fracs  were  still 
forming.  And  maybe  they  continued  to  grow  during  the  dynamic 
phases  of  the  tunnel  and  cavity  growth. 

Carothers:  I  have  heard  that  on  Red  Hot  there  is  a  big  fracture 
that  extends  a  long  way,  and  is  wide  and  open. 

Ristvet:  Yes,  that's  also  in  the  Deep  Well  access  drift,  where 
we  saw  these  two  steam-type  fractures.  Those  were  observed  during 
the  actual  reentry  when  Bill  Vollendorf  and  probably  Mel  Merrit, 
because  he  was  the  scientific  director,  or  whatever  the  title  was  in 
those  days,  on  the  shot,  went  back  in  there.  And  yes,  they  could 
see  this  big  opening  in  the  top  of  the  Deep  Well  access  drift,  filled 
with  glass.  However,  the  ones  we  actually  mined  up  to  were  very 


328 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


wide,  a  foot  wide  or  so,  but  they  didn't  go  anywhere.  They  only 
went  three,  four,  five  meters  from  the  cavity.  I  think  the  viscosity 
of  that  glass  just  plugs  those  things  up  real  quick. 

Smith:  Well,  in  addition  to  those  short  fractures,  there  is  that 
fracture  that  goes  over  the  top  of  the  drift  that  went  over  to  Deep 
Weil.  And  this  is  a  fracture  with  radioactivity  in  it.  My  predecessor 
had  them  drill  down,  and  my  impression  is  that  they  traced  it  down 
about  thirty  feet.  When  I  got  into  the  program  I  was  still  curious 
about  it,  and  we  drilled  a  bunch  more  holes  up.  It  goes  up  over  a 
hundred  feet  from  where  the  tunnel  intersects  it;  we  drilled  holes 
through  it,  and  ran  radiation  probes  through  it.  So,  in  addition  to 
all  those  short  fractures  there  is  this  additional  one,  and  I  think 
people  tend  to  forget  about  that  fracture.  They  concentrate  on 
what  was  found  in  the  DNA  work,  when  they  were  looking  at  all  the 
phenomenology  of  decoupled  and  coupled  shots. 

Carothers:  Gary,  there  were  samples  of  glass  found  in  the 
fractures  that  occured  on  Ranier.  Could  you  tell,  from  the 
radiochemistry,  when  those  fractures  occured? 

Higgins:  That  fracuring  was  going  on  within  the  first  two 
hundred  milliseconds,  because  the  material  found  in  them  was  from 
the  cavity  itself,  like  copper,  and  uranium.  Uranium  is  one  of  those 
elements  that,  if  it  has  the  slightest  opportunity,  is  going  to 
recombine  with  any  oxygen  present.  It  had  done  that,  but  it  had 
done  so  locally,  sufficient  to  create  F-centers,  where  it  had  stripped 
away  electrons  and  made  a  little  electron-deficient  well  around  it. 
We  could  see  that  by  x-ray  diffraction;  we  could  see  islands  around 
the  uranium  where  it  had  become  uranium  oxide  at  the  expense  of 
all  of  its  good  neighbors.  It  had  arrived  as  a  metal,  or  it  wouldn't 
have  done  that,  and  that  record  would  not  have  been  in  the  glass. 
That  glass  is  bright  red,  instead  of  being  black,  because  all  of  the  F- 
centers  are  color-reactive.  The  bright  red  color  is  because  the 
uranium  has  made  some  of  the  silicon  dioxide  into  silicon  monoxide, 
which  only  exists  as  a  gas,  or  in  a  glass  as  a  dissolved  gas. 

Carothers:  You  say  this  fracture  occurred  during  the  first  two 
hundred  milliseconds.  Does  that  mean  it  occurred  before  the 
rebound,  and  perhaps  the  rebound  shut  it  off? 


Hydrofractures 


329 


Higgins:  That's  correct.  1  think  there's  good  evidence,  from 
the  chemistry,  and  also  now  in  the  calculations  to  indicate  that. 
During  cavity  growth,  if  the  cavity  gases  are  at  a  high  enough 
pressure,  and  they  are,  fractures  will  occur.  The  mystical  magical 
membrane  idea  occurred  because  we  knew  the  pressure  was  high 
enough  to  hydrofract,  but  it  didn't.  Well,  there's  now  evidence  that 
it  does  hydrofract,  and  part  of  the  normal  rebound  process  is 
pinching  those  cracks  off.  I  think  that  in  many  materials,  like  in 
alluvium,  that  is  also  a  transient  phenomenon,  that  there  is  another 
outgoing  relaxation  wave.  However,  that's  a  sonic  wave,  and  takes 
many,  many  milliseconds.  The  stress  cage  builds  up,  shuts  the 
fractures  off,  and  then  the  stresses  relax.  By  then  the  pressure  and 
temperature  have  gone  down  to  where  they  are  essentially  in 
equilibrium  with  their  surroundings. 

Carothers:  Things  have  to  happen  in  sequence  on  a  pretty  fast 
time  scale  to  keep  you  out  of  trouble  in  the  scenario  you  describe. 

Higgins:  Yes,  that's  exactly  right.  I  believe  that  pretty  fast  time 
scale  means  some  of  our  mysterious  failures  are  cases  where  that 
sequence  was  just  a  little  out  of  step. 

Carothers:  From  the  evidence  from  Rainier,  seeing  the  frac¬ 
tures  and  so  on,  wouldn't  one  be  led  to  think  that  hydrofractures 
could  occur  on  all  shots?" 

Higgins:  Yes. 

Carothers:  Now,  there  are  shots  which  don't  release  enough 
energy  to  form  much  of  a  stress  cage,  if  any.  Why  don't  they 
hydrofract  to  the  surface? 

Higgins:  I  think  they  do  hydrofract,  and  what  contains  them 
is  primarily  cooling  in  the  fractures.  They  don't  have  enough  energy 
to  form  a  stress  cage,  and  they  also  don't  have  enough  energy  to 
drive  a  fracture;  it  takes  a  lot  of  energy  to  do  that.  You  can  blow 
material  into  the  front  of  the  crack,  but  to  get  it  very  far  down  the 
crack  is  really  very  difficult.  People  who  have  tried  to  calculate 
hydrofracture  from  a  theoretical  point  of  view  are  always  astounded 
at  how  difficult  it  is  to  drive  a  hydrofracture.  To  initiate  a  fracture 
is  very  easy.  To  drive  it  any  considerable  distance  is  a  very  hard 
thing  to  do. 


330 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Particularly  when  there  are  losses  into  the  walls, 
and  where  you  have  cooling  so  you  have  liquid  at  the  tip  of  the 
crack,  which  you're  trying  to  push  on  from  the  back. 

Higgins:  Yes.  Absolutely.  The  first  thing  condensation  does, 
and  I  think  is  the  most  important  thing,  although  I  haven't  con¬ 
vinced  anyone  of  it,  is  to  cause  the  tip  of  the  fracture  to  cease  being 
a  discontinuity,  and  become  a  rounded  hemispherical  circle.  And 
that  happens  fairly  fast  if  you  try  to  drive  a  fracture  with  a 
condensable  liquid.  I've  often  thought  it  might  be  fun  to  try  to 
simulate  such  things  with  a  liquid  metal  driving  a  fracture  into  a 
cold,  solid  metal.  It's  not  likely  to  go  very  far,  because  you're  going 
to  get  a  wad  pretty  fast. 

Keller:  When  I  was  at  DNA  I  funded  S-Cubed  to  build  a 
hydrogen-oxygen  torch  as  a  very  well  controlled  high  pressure,  high 
temperature  steam  source,  to  use  in  experiments  to  validate  the 
condensable  flow  codes;  the  hydrofrac  codes.  Some  experiments 
were  done  in  sand-filled  pipes  to  check  the  porous  flow,  and  some 
were  done  in  drill  holes  in  G  tunnel  and  P  tunnel.  The  first  two  in 
G  tunnel  worked  very  well.  The  last  experiment  in  P  tunnel  was  like 
the  Perils  of  Pauline.  They  had  trouble,  and  finally  it  was  a  lot  of 
effort  which  didn't  produce  very  good  data.  But  the  first  couple  of 
experiments  have  been  used  numerous  times  as  proof  of  the  models. 

Peterson:  I  and  another  fellow,  and  a  few  other  people  here, 
put  together  a  steam  generator  that  burned  hydrogen  and  oxygen. 
With  that  we  did  some  fracture  tests  in  the  very  impermeable  tuffs 
in  G  tunnel.  On  the  tests  we  had  a  bore  hole  that  was  drilled  in  from 
the  tunnel.  What  I  call  the  test  region,  where  the  steam  was  being 
injected,  was  a  four-inch  diameter  hole  eighteen  inches  long.  We 
injected  hydrogen  and  oxygen  and  burned  it  in  that  little  section  of 
the  hole.  And  we  also  injected  water,  which  turned  to  steam,  to  get 
the  right  steam  conditions.  We  were  trying  to  get  a  steam  source 
that  had  characteristics  similar  to  what  we  thought  was  in  the  cavity. 

To  do  that  we  were  running  about  a  thousand  degree  Centi¬ 
grade  steam,  and  I  believe  we  were  running  pressures  of  seven  or 
eight  hundred  psi.  We  could  adjust  the  steam  generator  to  give 
whatever  we  thought  we  needed  for  the  source  conditions.  The 
energy  was  tremendous  that  we  were  putting  in  there;  we  were 


Hydrofractures  331 

dumping  like  one  or  two  megawatts  into  that  little  hole.  To  run  for 
about  two  minutes  required  twenty-four  big  cylinders  of  hydrogen 
and  twelve  cylinders  of  oxygen. 

We  looked  at  the  steam  flow,  and  the  fracture  propagation. 
The  main  attempt  was  to  try  to  calibrate  the  KRAK  code,  and 
validate  it.  So,  we  looked  at  steam  fracturing  from  that  source,  and 
steam  flow,  and  steam  condensation.  We  had  numbers  of  drill  holes 
that  had  been  drilled  in  at  various  distances  from  the  source  hole, 
and  we  looked  at  the  fracture  tip  propagation  across  those  bore 
holes,  and  looked  at  the  pressure  rise,  and  so  forth  and  so  on.  It  was 
to  get  a  better  idea  of  fracturing,  to  see  whether  the  models  really 
do  calculate  steam  fracturing  correctly. 

Carothers:  When  you  hydrofracture  something  you  take  some 
water,  or  steam,  or  whatever.  You  pressurize  it.  There's  a  little 
discontinuity  in  the  rock,  and  the  rock  cracks.  The  fluid  moves 
down  the  crack,  transmits  the  pressure,  and  the  crack  extends. 
That's  my  view  of  hydrofracture. 

Peterson:  I  don't  think  it's  any  different  than  mine.  I  think  it's 
been  interesting  over  the  last  five  years  to  see  what  we've  learned 
in  terms  of  fracturing.  If  we  look  at  fracturing  from  a  cavity,  and 
we  take  a  standard  tamped  shot,  the  only  time,  in  most  cases,  that 
it  looks  like  you  can  get  any  fracture  from  this  cavity  is  during  the 
time  that  the  cavity  is  actually  growing. 

That's  the  only  time  that  the  stress  fields  are  set  up  in  a  manner 
which  allows  the  pressure  in  the  fracture  to  be  greater  than  the 
confining  pressure.  If  the  confining  pressure  around  the  fracture  is 
greater  than  the  pressure  inside,  the  fracture  just  closes  back  up.  It 
won't  grow.  While  the  cavity  growth  is  continuing,  the  shockwave 
is  moving  out  further,  and  the  shock  is  way  ahead  of  the  cavity. 
Sometimes  you  can  see  that  you  can  get  these  fractures  that  will 
grow  a  little  bit.  They  don't  go  very  far  and  they  don't  last  very  long 
in  time.  And  then  when  the  stress  fields  change,  they  are  again 
closed  right  up.  So  the  most  you  see  when  you  go  back  into  one  of 
these  events  is  one  of  these  gas  seams  that  people  will  talk  about 
once  in  a  while.  They  saw  a  little,  thin  seam  that  had  some 
radioactivity  in  it.  Even  our  calculations,  at  least  the  ones  that  I  have 
seen,  never  indicate  that  once  the  cavity  is  formed  that  you  can 
fracture  out  of  it  any  more.  If  our  calculations  are  right,  you  just 
can't  because  the  pressure  in  the  cavity  is  too  low  by  that  time. 


332 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  When  the  cavity  is  expanding  the  material  at  the 
boundary  has  to  be  moving  apart  and  so  that  makes  it  easier  for 
something  to  keep  pushing  it  apart,  because  it's  stretching,  in  a  way. 

Peterson:  Yes.  And  when  it  stops  stretching,  and  stops  that 
outward  velocity  you  can  look  at  it  crudely  as  the  momentum  just 
squeezes  it  back  together.  And  the  reflection  of  the  stress  wave 
from  a  long  way  away  comes  back  too,  and  just  squeezes  it  all  back 
shut. 

Carothers:  There  are  pictures  taken  during  the  Rainier  reentry 
showing  thick  seams  of  dark  material,  which  were  glass  from  the 
cavity,  or  material  from  the  cavity,  that  flowed  out  in  the  rock  a  long 
way. 

Peterson:  I  don't  know  what  you  term  a  long  way.  If  you're 
talking  like  one  cavity  radius  outside  the  cavity,  to  me  that  isn't  very 
far  at  all.  Something  like  that  does  not  disagree  with  the  analyses 
thatwe  have  done,  and  is  not  surprising,  and  I  don'tthink  is  unusual. 
I  think  one  could  expect  it. 

Carothers:  There  was  also  the  supposition  on  Rainier  that  this 
could  be  attributed  to  a  separation  in  bedding  planes,  rather  than 
a  fracture  of  the  native  rock. 

Peterson:  I  think  that's  true,  but  if  I  go  back  and  put  on  a 
calculator's  hat,  I  don't  think  it's  fair  to  distinguish  the  fact  that  the 
fracture  went  along  a  bedding  plane.  If  the  stresses  are  set  up  so  you 
can  grow  this  fracture,  it's  obviously  going  to  pick  the  easiest  place 
to  go.  If  there's  a  fault  line  that's  aimed  in  the  right  direction,  it  will 
go  that  way.  It  likes  to  take  the  easiest  path.  So,  that's  where  one 
would  expect  to  see  them.  I  don't  think  it's  going  to  start  off 
through  the  middle  of  a  big  bed  of  rock  all  by  itself,  if  it  could  take 
the  planes  in  one  of  the  interfaces  and  go  along  that  direction. 

I  think  the  interesting  thing  from  the  work  that's  been  done  on 
fracturing  is  that  it  has  allowed  us  to  at  least  think,  at  the  present, 
that  we  understand  why  Red  Hot  contained,  and  didn't  just  blow 
everything  out  of  that  tunnel. 

There  was  a  plug  formed  in  the  tunnel,  and  that  plug  was 
moving  out  fairly  rapidly.  If  you  go  back  and  do  basic  back  of  the 
envelope  analysis,  if  you  did  have  a  classical  cavity  pressure  history 
back  in  Red  Hot,  that  plug  should  never  have  stopped.  It  should 
never  have  even  wanted  to  slow  down.  The  analyses,  now  that  we 


Hydrofractures  333 

can  do  fracture  calculations,  show  that  if  you  detonate  something 
in  a  cavity  like  Red  Hot,  you  grow  multitudes  of  fractures.  Just 
multitudes  of  them.  There's  no  reason  that  the  world  around  it 
doesn't  want  to  fracture. 

Red  Hot  was  in  a  pre-formed  cavity,  and  as  a  result  there  wasn't 
much  plastic  deformation.  There  weren't  big  stresses  built  up  in  the 
material  around  the  cavity.  The  cavity  pressure  is  extremely  large 
compared  to  the  stresses  surrounding  it.  And  so  it  likes  to  fract,  just 
as  they  do  these  massive  hydrofracs  in  the  oil  field.  It's  analogous. 
So  you  get  multitudes  of  these  fractures,  and  the  harder  you  drive 
these  fractures  the  more  of  them  you  get.  When  you  really  drive 
the  rock  hard,  as  on  Red  Hot,  you  get  a  tremendous  number  of  them 
that  are  formed. 

So,  you  get  a  lot  of  surface  area,  and  as  you  get  a  lot  of  surface 
area,  then  you  get  a  lot  of  cooling.  And  so  you  quench  the  pressure 
really  fast.  Of  course,  that  quenches  the  fractures,  and  then  they 
all  just  sort  of  dribble  out  and  quit.  Yet  the  cavity  pressure  has  gone 
down  tremendously  to  the  point  that  it  isn't  really  a  containment 
problem.  I  think  that's  what  our  fracturing  modeling  is  telling  us. 
In  the  reentry  on  Red  Hot,  over  the  last  few  years,  they've  found 
many  of  these  types  of  fractures  that  have  been  driven  from  that 
cavity.  So,  the  model  may  even  be  correct.  I  think  the  fracturing 
work  has  been  a  very  good  thing  to  have  done,  and  has  given  us 
another  handle  on  why  things  contain. 

Duff:  The  leakage,  the  almost  disaster,  which  was  associated 
with  Red  Hot  was  related  not  to  a  long,  high  driving  cavity  pressure, 
but  to  a  very  poor  stemming  plan.  It  was  stemmed  by  a  wall  of 
sandbags,  and  that  wall  of  sandbags  acted  as  the  wadding  in  a 
shotgun.  It  was  put  in  motion  by  the  pressure,  and  proceeded  to 
knock  out  the  succeeding  closure  systems,  one  after  the  other.  It 
came  to  rest  twelve  hundred  feet  down  the  drift,  and  we  were  just 
lucky. 

Carothers:  John,  arguments  have  been  made  that  hydrofrac¬ 
tures  from  the  growing  cavity  are  at  least  part  of  the  reason  shots 
contain.  Do  you  place  any  credence  in  that  model? 

Rambo:  I  certainly  place  some  credence  in  it.  I  think  the 
hydrofractures  don't  go  all  that  far  because  of  the  cracks  there  are 
in  the  rocks.  So,  they  tend  to  cool  down,  and  not  go  too  far.  But 


334 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


that  puts,  I  think,  a  little  more  responsibility  on  us  to  think  about 
what  other  pathways  are  available  for  the  gases  to  go  some  place.  I 
think  hydrofractures  are  part  of  it. 

Carothers:  The  pressure  acts  everywhere.  There's  a  bedding 
plane,  go  that  way.  There's  a  fault,  go  that  way.  You  can't  take 
account  of  that  in  your  calculations,  can  you? 

Rambo:  No,  the  late  time  phenomenon  is  not  accounted  for. 
When  we  do  run  into  to  a  residual  stress  problem  that  we  want  to 
look  at  further,  we  take  our  material  properties  down  to  S-Cubed. 
They  can  run  calculations  that  do  the  dynamics,  and  accounts  for 
hydrofracture  where  the  gas  is  allowed  to  flow  out  in  some  worst 
case  scenario,  like  a  single  hydrofracture.  How  far  is  that  going  to 
go,  for  example.  That's  what  we  did  on  Barnwell,  and  they  did 
calculate  a  fracture  that  went  something  like  a  hundred,  or  a 
hundred  and  fifty  meters.  That  was  a  couple  of  cavity  radii  or  so. 
Hydrofractures  don't  seem  to  go  further  than  that,  at  least  in  the 
calculations. 

Carothers:  Norton,  you've  done  a  lot  of  calculational  work  on 
hydrofractures.  Tell  me  something  about  hydrofracturing. 

Rimer:  I  hope  I'm  telling  you  people  at  the  CEP  that  there  are 
limitations  on  what  we  know.  Therefore  we  make  assumptions, 
which  we  consider  conservative,  and  that's  a  funny  word  to  use, 
since  we  try  to  overestimate,  and  to  do  things  in  a  direction  to 
overestimate  the  length  of  a  fracture.  For  example,  we  assume  that 
the  rock  has  no  fracture  toughness,  no  strength  in  tension  at  all.  If 
it  has  strength  in  tension,  the  fracture  will  be  slightly  shorter.  We 
assume  we  get  one  single  fracture.  If  there  are  multiples,  the  driving 
pressure  will  go  down  faster,  and  the  fractures  will  be  shorter.  We 
do  the  worst-case  calculations,  and  if  those  are  acceptable,  if  they 
give  short  fractures  that  aren't  going  to  threaten  things,  we're  very 
happy. 

We  don't  know  the  actual  details  of  a  lot  of  this.  For  instance, 
we  don't  know  how  to  calculate  the  initiation  of  a  fracture;  a 
fracture  initiates  at  a  point  of  weakness.  How  could  we  possibly 
know  where  in  a  cavity  that's  going  to  happen,  especially  after  the 
cavity  has  expanded  a  factor  of  a  hundred  in  volume,  or  forty  in 
volume,  depending  on  which  shot  we're  talking  about?  We  can't 
possibly  know  that,  so  we  assume  it  initiates. 


Hydrofractures 


335 


Another  thing  is  that  it  is  difficult  to  make  clear  what  we  mean 
by  a  hydrofracture.  The  classic  hydrofracture  is  one  where  the  gas 
breaks  the  rock,  and  pours  out  through  that  fracture.  That's  not 
what  we  believe  happens.  We  believe  there  are  preexisting,  or  shot 
formed,  planes  of  weakness  -  -  bedding  planes,  faults,  all  of  which 
may  be  closed  pre-shot  -  -  which  are  the  likely  places  where 
something  will  open,  and  the  radiation  may  come  out  along  those 
planes.  It's  not  breaking  new  things,  in  general.  I  don't  think,  in 
a  tamped  event  in  tuff,  that  we've  ever  really  seen  a  hydrofracture, 
in  the  classic  definition  of  a  hydrofracture.  What  we've  seen  are 
radioactive  seams  which  we've  encountered  on  mining  for  a  new 
event,  two  cavity  radii  away.  We've  seen  radiation.  The  Geiger 
counter  registers  something,  otherwise,  you  wouldn't  have  noticed 
it.  You  look  more  closely,  and  you  see  gray,  altered  tuff,  which 
looks  like  it  encountered  some  steam.  And,  it's  invariably  on  some 
bedding  plane. 

It's  the  steam  in  the  cavity  that's  the  fracturing  gas,  and  that 
alters  the  tuff.  There  are  other  phenomena  with  steam,  and  we  do 
consider  them.  With  all  the  models  we  presume  the  fracture 
initiates,  and  presume  only  a  single  fracture.  We  can  model  multiple 
fractures,  and  we  have  done  that  successfully  for  the  junior  jade  HE 
experiments.  Then  there  are  a  lot  of  degrees  of  modeling  that  we 
employ  in  our  fracture  calculations. 

The  first  thing  we  do  is  model  a  fracture  where  we  assume 
cavity  pressure  is  right  at  the  tip  of  the  fracture  as  it  expands.  And 
we  only  limit  the  speed  at  which  it  can  grow  by  solid  mechanics 
considerations;  fractures  cannot  go  faster  than  half  the  Raleigh 
speed  -  -  half  of  the  shear  wave  speed,  roughly.  We  allow  it  to  go 
into  any  zone  in  the  code.  That  gives  us  the  most  likely  direction 
for  the  hydrofracture.  The  next  thing  we  do  is  take  that  direction, 
and  we  presume  a  single  fracture  goes  along  that  path.  We  insist  that 
only  those  cells  that  are  along  that  path  are  allowed  to  fracture. 
Now  what  do  we  do  as  to  how  the  material  in  the  fracture  behaves? 
We  can  assume  it's  steam,  and  allow  it  to  condense,  allow  it  to  seep 
into  the  wall,  allow  heat  conduction  into  the  wall.  Or,  we  can 
remove  those  assumptions,  and  make  the  fracture  longer.  We  try 
all  sorts  of  different  assumptions,  to  see  where  it  gets  us. 

We  include  all  these  assumptions,  or  we  don't  include  them  to 
give  degrees  of  conservatism.  And  one  of  those  assumptions  is  that 
steam  is  in  the  fracture,  and  either  it  can  or  it  cannot  condense.  We 


336 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


calculate  the  temperature  of  the  gas.  We  have  all  that  capability. 
Most  recently  Bob  Nilson  has  put  in  a  different  approach  to  the  fluid 
flow  in  the  fracture.  He's  doing  a  finite  difference  approach  now, 
which  allows  us  to  put  in  inertial  effects.  So,  we're  doing  all  those 
detailed  models.  We're  not  maybe  having  the  nth  degree  of 
precision;  for  instance,  we're  modeling  the  steam  as  condensable 
and  not  based  on  temperature.  We're  not  putting  a  good  equation 
of  state  of  steam  in  the  code.  We  could,  but  why  slow  down  the 
calculation? 

Carothers:  When  you  say  that  you  get  the  direction  that  the 
fracture  might  go,  what  determines  that?  Do  you  put  in  an  estimate 
of  the  in-situ  stress  field? 

Rimer:  Within  the  two-dimensional  limitations  of  the  code  we 
put  in  in-situ  stress  fields.  The  vertical  stress  is  rho*g*h;  the  weight 
of  the  material  above  it.  We  put  that  in  exactly  in  all  of  our 
calculations,  to  the  extent  that  the  grid  of  the  code  is  in  equilibrium. 
If  we  run  it  a  million  cycles,  without  the  bomb,  nothing  is  going  to 
move.  That  we  had  to  do  for  the  geophysics  calculations,  because 
they're  very  late  time.  For  the  horizontal  stresses,  the  two  stress 
components  have  to  be  equal,  due  to  the  two-dimensionality, 
otherwise  you  get  horizontal  motion.  But  they  don't  have  to  be 
equal  to  the  vertical  stress.  And  we've  done  calculations  with  those 
stresses  equal  to  the  minimum  stress  measured  pre-shot  in  the 
ground. 

Carothers:  In  the  tunnels  you  have  the  opportunity  to  get  in- 
situ  stress  measurements;  directions,  magnitudes,  and  so  forth? 

Rimer:  Yes.  It's  an  interesting  phenomenon.  It's  really  3-D. 
One  of  the  minimum  stresses  is  the  horizontal  stress.  The  other 
principal  stress,  horizontally,  is  usually  as  large  as  the  vertical  stress, 
so  we  can't  model  that  in  the  code,  but  it's  conservative  to  model 
that  one  as  a  minimum  also,  because  the  lower  the  stress,  particu¬ 
larly  for  a  decoupled  shot,  the  more  likely  a  fracture  path  will  exist. 
For  a  tamped  shot  those  stresses  don't  mean  diddly,  because  you  get 
a  good  residual  stress  field. 

Carothers:  When  the  tip  of  the  fracture  is  growing,  what  does 
the  tip  look  like?  Does  it  have  a  radius,  or  is  it  a  mathematical  point, 
or  what?  How  do  you  put  that  in  the  code? 


Hydrofractures  337 

Rimer:  The  mathematicians  who  do  this  like  to  have  it  be  a 
mathematical  point.  We  allow  it  to  propagate  through  a  cell  at  a 
given  speed.  It's  a  simplification.  The  more  important  thing  is, 
what  is  the  pressure  distribution  of  the  gas  along  the  fracture.  If 
you're  driving  a  fracture  through  a  strong  residual  stress,  cavity 
pressure  may  have  to  go  all  the  way  to  the  tip  before  you  can  open 
up  the  fracture  further.  In  a  decoupled  event,  we  calculate  a 
distribution  of  pressure,  fluid  pressure,  along  the  fracture,  and 
sometimes  the  tip  is  opened  by  tensile  failure,  the  actual  tensile 
stresses  in  the  rocks  surrounding  the  fracture  at  the  tip.  And,  you 
may  not  have  any  gas  at  the  tip,  but  you're  still  prying  open  the 
fracture.  There  are  a  number  of  analytical  solutions,  theoretical 
solutions,  that  Bob  Nilson  has  tried  FAST  against,  and  we've  run  the 
full  code  againstsimplified  cases  to  see  ifwe  match  the  mathematical 
solutions,  and  we  do. 

Carothers:  You  mentioned  tensile  failure.  That  would  imply 
to  me  you  were  driving  steam,  or  water  into  the  fracture,  and  that 
the  fracture  was  opening  ahead  of  where  the  slug  of  water  was. 

Rimer:  That's  right.  It's  being  pried  open,  particularly  if  the 
material  around  it  has  not  failed.  If  it's  elastic  you  have  this  strong 
rock  just  being  pried  open. 

Smith:  The  calculators  talk  about  the  tip  of  the  fracture  being 
out  in  front  of  the  water,  and  indeed  we  found  that  in  our  hydrofrac 
work  in  G  tunnel.  We  would  hydrofrac  with  dyed  water,  and  then 
go  back  and  chase  the  fractures,  the  dyed  marks.  We  would 
sometimes  find  that  the  dye  would  quit,  but  there  would  be  a 
fracture  in  front  of  it,  and  so  indeed  it  looked  as  though  pushing  that 
water  in  was  prying  open  the  rock.  There  were  sections  out  in  front 
of  the  dyed  fluid,  the  water,  that  had  fractured  before  the  water  had 
gotten  to  it.  Of  course,  the  calculators  were  delighted  when  we 
found  that  phenomenology,  because  they  think  they  had  predicted 
it. 

Rimer:  If  the  material  around  the  tip  is  plastic,  then  you  don't 
have  a  lever  action,  so  you  can't  pry  anything  open.  It's  the  actual 
conditions  in  the  rock  that  really  matter.  For  some  situations,  the 
actual  plastic  failure  is  very  important. 


338 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  If  you're  doing  your  calculations  with  a  two 
dimensional  code,  isn't  that  a  form  of  built-in  conservatism?  The 
world  is  really  three  dimensional,  and  so  many  effects  vary  as  r- 
cubed,  but  you're  taking  account  of  them  as  r-squared. 

Rimer:  That's  a  very  good  point.  I'd  say  yes  and  no.  It's  not 
that  things  go  as  r-cubed  -  -  we  have  the  spherical  attenuation  in  the 
two  dimensional  code.  The  problem  is  the  shape  of  the  fracture.  If 
the  fracture  is  horizontal,  the  axis  of  symmetry  of  the  2-D  code 
makes  it  a  disc.  That  may  or  may  not  be  bad.  However,  if  the 
fracture  is  up  at  an  angle,  like  we  showed  as  the  most  likely  path  for 
Misty  Echo,  it  makes  the  fracture  be  a  cone,  and  that's  not  the  same 
volume  for  the  fracture. 

The  worst  case  may  be  if  you  just  had  a  strip  that  fractured,  like 
toward  the  Baneberry  fault.  We  always  felt  that  one  of  these  days 
we  were  going  to  get  back  to  Baneberry,  and  model  it  assuming  the 
fracture  is  not  as  a  complete  disc  or  cone,  but  just  as  a  little  piece 
in  a  particular  direction.  That  would  deplete  the  cavity  pressure 
less.  The  time  when  that  fracture  came  out,  which  was  minutes,  may 
be  very  sensitive  to  the  amount  the  fracture  depletes  the  cavity 
pressure. 

Ristvet:  You've  seen  many  a  calculation  presented  at  the  CEP 
where  the  peak  of  the  stress  field  was  about  one  and  a  half  cavity 
radii  out  beyond  the  cavity  wall.  Now  we  think  it's  out  a  little 
beyond  two  cavity  radii  with  the  damage  models  that  have  come  into 
being.  It  was  always  comforting  to  see  that  two  or  three  times  cavity 
pressure,  so  you  could  say,  "Ah,  there's  no  way  it  can  hydrofrac  out 
of  there."  Well,  there  are  some  cases  where  the  residual  stress 
would  probably  be  very  small,  so  I've  had  a  number  of  hydrofrac 
calculations  done  at  S-Cubed.  It  turns  out  that  it's  very  hard  to 
hydrofrac  even  if  you  don't  have  any  residual  stress. 

We  used  to  model  everything  as  one  hydrofrac,  and  maybe  the 
only  time  we  ever  have  seen  one  single  major  hydrofrac  out  of  a 
cavity  was  perhaps  Baneberry  where  there  was  a  very  preferential 
pathway.  There  was  a  clay  loaded  fault,  which  I  would  not  want  to 
have  passing  through  my  cavity,  especially  one  oriented  such  that 
the  cavity  grew  up  into  it  and  didn't  really  displace  it  through  radial 
shear.  I  think  that  would  be  a  very  scary  situation,  even  if  we  don't 
create  residual  stress  for  all  the  other  reasons  that  have  been  talked 
about. 


Hydrofractures 


339 


Kunkel:  We  can  begin  to  plot  the  frequency  of  fractures  at 
some  distance  from  work  points  by  other  bore  holes  we  have  drilled. 
In  the  valley  testing  areas  we  have  lots  of  holes,  and  we  very 
infrequently  come  across  radiation  from  a  previous  shot  in  another 
hole.  When  we  do  it  is  always  the  object  of  much  curiosity. 
Certainly  we're  not  commonly  getting  fracturing  at  large  distances 
away  from  our  shots,  large  distances  being  half  a  depth  of  burial. 

Carothers:  Byron,  on  your  reentries,  aside  from  Red  Hot,  do 
you  see  physical  evidence  of  hydrofractures?  Have  you  come  across 
something  where  you  said,  "Yes  sir,  that's  a  hydrofrac?" 

Ristvet:  Yes,  but  it's  very  rare.  The  ones  we  have  found  have 
been  solitary  ones,  maybe  two,  typically  along  bedding  planes  or 
pre-existing  faults,  and  they've  extended  to  a  couple  of  cavity  radii. 
They  may  actually  occur  during  the  dynamic  growth  phase,  when 
the  material  is  in  tension  basically,  and  you  can  have  radial  shear. 

Usually  those  are  very  interesting,  because  we  don't  see  any 
glass.  What  we've  always  seen  is  altered  tuff.  It  sort  of  looks  like 
gray  Portland  cement.  We've  taken  tuff,  and  when  you  hit  it  with 
a  steam  torch,  or  even  a  regular  torch,  you  get  this  gray  powdery 
material.  The  zeolites  want  to  go  to  feldspar,  so  you're  creating 
these  micro-crystaline  feldspars,  and  so  these  seams  are  easy  to  spot. 
The  USGS,  back  in  the  old  TEP  days  of  the  sixties,  when  we  were 
first  getting  into  this  underground  thing,  were  looking  at  all  this 
stuff.  And  I  believe  Gary  Higgins  did  similar  experiments. 

Some  of  these  seams  don't  have  any  radioactivity  in  them. 
Some  of  them  have  slight  amounts,  which  are  probably  the  daughter 
products  of  some  of  the  early-time  gaseous  precursors  that  got  out 
of  there.  We've  never  re-entered  soon  enough  to  know  what  the 
smoking  gun  really  was,  because  all  the  lanthanum-barium  stuff  has 
decayed  away,  so  you  really  don't  know  what  gases  were  down 
there.  You  can  only  sort  of  guess. 

Carothers:  You  make  hydrofracing  sound  much  less  of  a 
containment  threat  than  some  people  have  feared. 

Ristvet:  I  think  as  long  as  you  have  a  coupled  event,  where  you 
don't  start  off  with  a  big  air-fiiled  room,  hydrofracing  is  not  a  serious 
threat.  And  we've  never  seen  any  evidence  of  hydrofrac  around  any 
of  our  low  yield  events  in  big  cavities,  in  which  the  pressures  are, 
after  a  few  miliseconds,  typically  three  to  four  times  what  the 


340 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


pressures  are  in  a  tamped  event.  I  think  Mr.  Hudson's  measure¬ 
ments,  and  calculations,  of  those  pressures  are  pretty  close.  Again, 
the  calculations  say  we  should  have  some  short  stubby  fractures. 
We've  mined  right  up  to  the  cavities,  mined  right  into  them,  and  we 
had  experiments  on  Minnie  Jade  to  try  to  detect  if  they  ever 
occurred  and  get  a  timing  on  them,  and  we  never  saw  any. 

We  drilled  back  over  Minnie  Jade  really  specifically  looking, 
because  Minnie  Jade  was  the  first  of  those  low  yield  cavity  shots. 
The  equilibrium  pressure  in  those  cavities  is  between  five  and  six 
thousand  psi,  which  is  more  than  enough  to  highly  overwhelm  the 
tuff,  and  there's  no  residual  stress  whatsoever.  Those  cavities  are 
steam  filled,  and  why  they  didn't  hydrofrac  is  difficult  to  say, 
because  even  the  codes,  as  best  as  we  can  model  things,  say  we 
should  have  some  close  to  meter  long  hydrofracs. 

Maybe  we  do  have  hydrofracs  of  a  few  centimeters.  I  suspect 
that  is  the  mechanism,  because  our  cavities  have  almost  always 
cooled  faster  than  the  calculations  done  by  S-Cubed,  using  simple 
decay  models,  predict .  When  we  plug  in  the  empirical  kind  of  data, 
we  can  usually  predict  them  doggone  close.  I  think  we  do  drive 
those  higher  pressure  gases,  at  least  partially,  into  the  pores,  and 
that's  a  pretty  effective  cooling  mechanism,  because  the  pore  water 
is  only  seventy  degrees  Farenheit. 

Smith:  I  did  some  hydrofac  work  in  G  tunnel,  which  evolved 
into  airfrac.  We  were  driving  fractures  with  air,  and  again  it  was  to 
look  at  the  steam  hydrofrac  problem.  We  did  it  with  air  rather  than 
steam,  because  then  there  is  one  less  variable  to  play  with. 

But,  G  tunnel  kind  of  trickled  down  because  they  ran  into 
money  problems,  and  there  was  also  this  new  wave  of  the  future  with 
ESscH,  and  all  the  increasing  regulations.  It  turned  out  that  the  air 
we  had  been  breathing  for  years  was  not  adequate.  And  the 
electrical  facilities  were  old.  They  would  have  had  to  upgrade  all 
those  things,  and  the  cost  to  do  that  would  have  been  very,  very 
high.  To  drill  a  new  shaft  for  air  ventilation  was  prohibitively 
expensive.  A  lot  of  those  old  tunnels  were  in  pretty  sad  shape,  so 
they  were  virtually  abandoned. 

It  was  costing  about  1.2  million  a  year  to  keep  that  tunnel 
open,  but  there  was  other  work  in  there  which  paid  part  of  that. 
There  was  work  for  the  waste  disposal  folks,  and  there  was  some 
interesting  work  on  gas  stimulation  which  was  paid  for  by  private 


Hydrofractures 


341 


money  from  the  Gas  Research  Institute  of  Chicago.  That  work  was 
related  to  the  things  they  do  to  hydrofrac  gas-bearing  formations. 
What  they  had  in  G  tunnel  was  1  500  feet  of  overburden,  where  they 
could  do  the  experiments,  and  then  mine  back  into  the  areas  and 
look  at  the  results.  So,  they  were  able  to  test  a  lot  of  assumptions 
about  stimulating  wells  with  hydrofracs. 

There  was  one  experiment  they  did  that  was  hydrofracing  from 
the  surface,  1  500  feet  above.  They  did  the  standard  industry 
practice  of  colored  sands,  and  walnut  shells,  and  ail  the  usual  stuff. 
Then  they  started  drilling  holes,  trying  to  find  this  fracture  that  was 
supposed  to  propagate  five  or  six  hundred  feet.  They  eventually 
mined  back  and  found  out  it  had  propagated  no  more  than  twenty 
or  thirty  feet  from  where  it  started.  It  got  into  a  region  of  massive 
fractures  and  just  stopped. 

Carothers:  As  you  know,  people  at  S-Cubed  have  been  doing 
caiculational  work  on  hydrofractures;  how  they're  formed,  how 
they  propagate,  and  so  on.  Apparently  they  have  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  such  fractures  don't  propagate  very  far  -  -  perhaps 
one  or  two  cavity  radii.  Perhaps  that's  because  you  simply  can't,  in 
a  sense,  pump  them  enough.  You  can't  keep  delivering  the 
necessary  fluids  and  the  necessary  pressures  to  keep  them  going. 

Smith:  We  discovered  that  experimentally.  No  way  could  we 
get  big  enough  air  compressors  to  drive  those  things.  The  harder 
you  drive  a  fracture,  the  more  the  aperture  opens  up. 

We  did  a  whole  series  of  shots  prior  to  Misty  Echo,  called 
Junior  Jade.  That  was  a  series  of  eight  pound  shots,  where  we  varied 
the  size  of  the  air  cavity  around  an  eight  pound  charge.  We  were 
looking  at  what  point  do  you  begin  to  create  fractures.  If  the  shot 
is  tightly  coupled  presumably  it  will  set  up  the  residual  stress,  and 
there  won't  be  fractures.  At  some  point,  if  the  cavity  is  large 
enough,  you  won't  set  up  any  residual  stress,  and  there  will  be 
fractures. 

All  told  we  did  about  five  of  these  shots,  and  on  the  one  that 
was  tightly  coupled,  the  cavity  indeed  grew,  and  we  measured  the 
cavity  pressure.  We  also  measured  the  volume  of  these  cavities  with 
a  volumetric  technique  before  and  after  the  shot,  and  then  we  mined 
back  into  them.  On  the  tightly  coupled  one,  we  ended  up  with  a 
cavity  which  had  grown  to  two  or  three  times  the  original  volume. 


342 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


On  the  next  step,  with  a  larger  initial  cavity,  fractures  were 
driven  out.  The  beauty  of  working  with  HE  in  this  soft  rock  is  that 
all  the  fractures  are  stained  with  the  HE  detonation  products,  which 
are  basically  carbon,  and  so  the  black  fractures  just  stand  out  like 
gang  busters.  There  were  many  fractures  radiating  out  from  this 
cavity,  and  then,  out  about  ten  feet  one  of  the  fractures  turned.  We 
knew  from  our  old  in-situ  hydrofrac  measurements  that  it  went  in 
the  direction  of  the  in-situ  stress.  The  fracture  always  opens  up 
against  the  minimum  in-situ  stress. 

Also,  the  big,  massive  hydrofrac  out  of  Red  Hot,  that  goes  over 
to  the  Deep  Well  cavity,  is  tilted  over.  On  all  the  hydrofrac  work 
we  had  done,  the  fractures  were  all  vertical,  and  so  I  asked  myself, 
"Why  is  that  fracture  tilted  over?  Surely,  it's  in-situ  stress  that 
controls  that  thing."  Then  we  started  doing  some  more  hydrofrac 
work  a  little  bit  closer  to  the  portal,  and  there  all  the  fractures  tilted 
over. 

As  you  play  with  that,  you  discover  that  there  is  a  topographic 
effect.  As  you  move  out  from  underneath  the  cap  of  the  mesa, 
you're  seeing  the  sloping  surface  of  the  front  of  the  mesa.  And, 
when  you  go  around  a  bend  the  fracture  also  turns,  and  it's  tilted. 
Both  the  azimuth  and  the  inclination  of  the  fracture  is  affected  by 
the  the  topographic  surface.  When  you  get  down  underneath  the 
cap  of  the  mesa,  all  the  fractures  become  vertical.  So  that  answered 
that  question. 

So,  when  the  fractures  got  far  enough  away  from  the  cavities, 
they  turned,  because  they're  controlled  by  the  in-situ  stress.  On  an 
HE  scale  we  were  able  to  show  that  phenomenology  of  driving 
fractures,  and  actually  look  at  them.  With  those  five  shots,  going 
from  fully  tamped  to  decoupled,  we  could  say  that  in-situ  stress  was 
controlling  there.  But,  we  still  don't  understand  the  answer  to  this: 
when  the  HE  goes  off,  how  does  the  shot  know  whether  there's  going 
to  be  an  in-situ  stress  field  and  not  be  able  to  drive  fractures,  versus 
it's  decoupled  and  can  drive  fractures?  One  thinks  of  the  residual 
stress  phenomena  as  something  happening  later  on,  and  containing 
the  fractures,  but  it  looks  like  these  fractures  grew  as  part  of  the 
dynamic  process,  because  the  fractures  grew,  and  the  cavity  didn't 
expand.  All  that  pressure  was  lost  out  into  the  fractures. 


Hydrofractures 


343 


Until  that  time  we  always  thought  of  fractures  leaving  the 
cavities  because  there  was  no  residual  stress  field  in  a  partially 
decoupled  shot.  The  fractures  grew  in  response  to  the  cavity 
pressure  being  higher  than  the  residual  stress.  But  it  turns  out  that 
it's  part  of  the  dynamic  process,  right  at  the  start.  The  calculations 
say  that  the  residual  stress  field  sets  up  when  the  material  rebounds, 
and  that's  fairly  late. 

Almost  invariably  when  we  mined  back  we  would  not  run  into 
any  fractures  on  a  fully  tamped,  fully  grouted  shot.  First  you  would 
start  hitting  softer  material,  and  there  was  a  very  distinct  boundary 
between  this  material  and  the  rock  that  hadn't  been  altered,  or 
damaged.  You  could  tell  it  with  a  geology  pick.  Then  you  hit  the 
cavity.  Now,  occasionally  we  would  find  a  black-filled  fracture. 
And  occasionally  on  DNA  shots  they  will  run  into  a  radioactive 
fracture,  but  it's  not  the  common  experience. 

Carothers:  It  is  only  fairly  recently  that  people  have  begun  to 
say  that  while  there  is  residual  stress,  it  isn't  necessarily  as  large  as 
calculated,  or  as  uniform,  or  doesn't  last  very  long,  and  the  basic 
mechanism  is  hydrofracturing  which  reduces  the  cavity  pressure  by 
absorbing  a  lot  of  energy. 

Hudson:  I  can't  argue  with  that.  I  think  a  much  more 
believable  scenario  than  the  residual  stress  scenario  is  having  high 
pressure  fluid  flowing  out  of  the  cavity  in  fractures.  It  probably 
happens  all  the  time.  If  these  fractures  are  generally  distributed, 
let's  say  in  all  directions,  then  probably  it's  a  good  thing.  The  gas 
is  just  distributed  evenly  in  all  directions  through  a  large  volume,  the 
pressure  falls,  and  it  doesn't  get  to  the  surface.  That  may  be  what 
happens  every  time  you  fire  an  event.  On  the  other  hand,  every 
event  may  be  different.  On  some  events  the  gas  may  be  bottled  up, 
and  they're  the  ones  you  should  worry  about.  On  other  events  it 
may  escape  quickly,  and  you  shouldn't  worry  at  all.  So  maybe  the 
really  big  residual  stress  field  is  a  bad  thing  to  have,  because  it  keeps 
things  bottled  up.  We  don't  know. 

Bass:  Carl  Smith  did  a  bunch  of  shots  in  G  tunnel  called  Junior 
Jade.  He  wanted  to  look  at  cracking  out  of  the  cavity.  Joe  LaComb 
sponsored  it,  and  it  was  a  very  interesting  bunch  of  work.  It  falls  in 
with  some  of  the  Sandia  work  on  how  do  you  gas  frac  tuff,  and  things 
like  that.  And  the  answer  is,  of  course,  that  you  gas  frac,  or  you 
fracture  a  well  with  a  propellant,  not  with  an  explosive.  You  want 


344 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


a  slow  burning  propellant  to  do  this  work.  Well,  Junior  Jade  was 
very  interesting  in  this  respect  because  as  he  changed  the  size  of  the 
cavity  you  have  no  cracking,  and  then  you  have  cracking. 

It  really  threw  a  real  mess  into  the  hands  of  all  the  DNA 
calculational  people,  because  they  were  not  calculating  cavity  size 
right,  or  anything  else.  Calculating  cavity  size  is  almost  impossible. 
You've  got  to  have  the  right  material  model,  you've  got  to  have  the 
right  damage  model,  and  nobody's  got  it. 

Carothers:  Dan,  you  can  take  cores  and  squash  them,  and  so 
on,  but  that  core  isn't  necessarily  representative  of  a  block  the  size 
of  this  room,  or  this  building,  which  may  have  one  or  more  fractures 
running  through  it.  Therefore,  while  rebound  is  certainly  real,  it 
may  be  more  faith  than  anything  else  when  you  say,  "I  ran  some 
calculations,  and  I  got  a  good  residual  stress  field,  so  this  shot  is 
okay."  So,  there  seems  to  be  a  body  of  opinion  that  an  important 
mechanism  for  containment  is  that  there  are  lots  of  fractures  that 
grow  while  the  cavity  is  growing  and  the  material  at  the  wails  is 
stretching.  They  don't  go  very  far,  but  there  are  a  lot  of  them,  and 
that  dumps  a  lot  of  energy,  so  the  cavity  pressure  goes  down,  and 
that's  what  really  happens.  What  are  your  comments  about  that? 

Patch:  I  don't  think  there's  anywhere  near  sufficient  volume 
or  time  available  to  get  rid  of  a  significant  amount  of  the  cavity  gas, 
or  the  energy  that's  in  the  cavity  that  way.  It's  conceivable  that  in 
a  decoupled  cavity  shot,  or  a  partially  decoupled  cavity  shot  like  Red 
Hot,  fractures  can  have  a  significant  influence  on  the  cavity  state, 
although  I've  always  been  a  little  bit  bothered  by  that.  I  don't  see 
any  way,  on  the  average  tamped  shot,  that  you  can  grow  crack 
volumes  that  are  significant  fractions  of  the  total  cavity  volume,  so 
it's  hard  to  see  how  they  can  influence  the  conditions  in  the  cavity. 

Carothers:  Then  my  question  is,  "Why  don't  ail  shots  vent?" 
Something  has  to  stop  fractures  which  could  grow  to  the  surface. 

Patch:  Yes,  something  has  to  do  it.  The  cavity  pressures  are 
known,  and  measured,  to  be  higher  than  the  kind  of  pressures  it 
takes  to  hydrofracture  the  media.  We've  done  many  hydrofracture 
tests  in  the  tuffs,  and  the  minimum  fracture  pressures  are  300  to 
700  psi  -  -  they're  not  that  big.  Now  the  opposing  school  could  say, 
"Well,  that's  okay,  because  there's  a  lot  of  molten  rock  around,  and 
you're  just  plugging  up  those  cracks  with  molten  rock."  So,  there 


Hydrofractures 


345 


are  many  facets  to  the  argument,  and  they  confuse,  or  add 
ammunition  to  either  camp.  I  think  there  is  plenty  of  evidence  that 
the  geostructure  certainly  perturbs  the  stress  state  locally,  because 
we  have  data  from  the  many  reentries  that  DNA  has  done.  And  it's 
not  unusual  to  come  across  a  radioactive  seam  within  roughly  two 
cavity  radii,  or  thereabouts. 

Carothers:  That's  not  a  very  long  fracture. 

Patch:  No,  it's  not  long.  And  the  seams  generally  are  not  that 
hot,  in  the  radioactive  sense.  You  get  some  detectable  amount  of 
activity,  but  you  don't  get  high  readings.  My  impression  is  that 
they're  not  that  frequent  either;  you  don't  run  into  a  gigantic 
network,  or  a  whole  nest  of  these  things.  There  will  be  one  or  two, 
or  maybe  three,  on  a  reentry  that  are  potentially  bothersome  when 
you  get  in  close  enough. 


346 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


347 


13 


Block  Motion 

In  the  post-shot  reentries  that  DNA  has  done  in  the  tunnels  it 
has  been  observed  that  large  blocks  of  rock  have  moved  and  been 
displaced  as  a  result  of  the  shot.  On  the  emplacement  hole  detona¬ 
tions  there  is  no  reentry  other  than  post-shot  drilling  to  recover 
samples  for  radiochemical  analysis,  so  the  fact  or  effect  of  such 
block  motions  is  not  known  for  those  events.  What  effect  such 
motions  have  on  postulated  containment  mechanisms  such  as  the 
residual  stress  field,  or  on  such  phenomena  such  as  cavity  growth  or 
size,  is  a  matter  of  conjecture.  Before  the  device  is  detonated  it  is 
not  possible  to  say  which,  if  any,  block  might  move,  or  how  much 
it  might  move.  The  question,  however,  is  an  important  one  for 
persons  designing  a  line-of-sight  pipe  with  various  closure  mecha¬ 
nisms  which  are  to  protect  the  samples  that  are  to  be  exposed.  It  is 
possible  that  motions  of  the  rocks  could  damage  the  sample  protec¬ 
tion  hardware,  and  cause  the  loss  of  much  of  the  data  and  equipment 
that  typically  is  used  on  the  effects  shots  in  the  tnnels. 

Carothers:  One  of  the  things  people  have  seen  on  post-shot 
tunnel  reentries  in  Rainier  Mesa  is  block  motion.  Now,  when  people 
talk  about  block  motion,  are  they  talking  about  blocks  the  size  of  this 
building,  or  the  size  of  this  desk? 

Orkild:  It  depends.  A  block  can  be  a  piece  of  rock  between  two 
cracks;  two  joints,  or  two  faults.  A  crack  is  just  an  break,  "joint" 
is  a  generic  term  referring  to  how  the  crack  was  formed;  a  joint  is 
generally  formed  by  cooling,  and  normally  by  definition  is  a  crack 
that  has  no  motion  on  it.  A  fault  has  had  movement.  So,  depending 
on  the  spacing  of  the  joints  and  faults,  blocks  can  have  sizes  from 
little  cubes  to  the  size  of  buildings.  And,  if  you  move  one  block  you 
have  to  move  the  other  blocks. 

The  Rainier  unit  itself,  called  Rainier  Mesa  tuff,  is  a  series  of 
blocks.  Erosion  has  been  going  on  long  enough  that  the  cooling 
joints  have  opened  up,  and  those  blocks  are  just  sitting  there, 
basically  held  together  by  gravity.  When  something  happens,  those 
blocks  do  move  among  themselves.  As  you  go  deeper  into  the  Mesa, 


348 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


I  think  the  cracks  are  smaller,  but  you  still  have  a  series  of  blocks. 
And,  as  you  go  deeper,  gravity  is  holding  them  together  better  and 
better,  until  your  eye  might  not  be  able  to  detect  them  as  blocks. 

When  you  detonate  a  nuclear  device,  some  of  those  blocks 
move  around  a  little.  This  one  might  move  a  lot  easier  than  that  one, 
this  other  one  might  not  move  at  all.  We  only  know  what  we  see  in 
the  reentry  drifts,  but  we  do  see  that.  When  you  go  back  into  the 
tunnel  you  can  observe,  and  see  that  this  block  slid  up  over  that 
block  x-number  of  inches.  Blocks  do  move,  and  you  wonder  why 
that  bed  down  there  stayed  there,  and  this  bed  up  here  moved. 
Then  you  look  and  say,  "Ah,  here's  a  nice  clay  zone  that  this  bed 
can  slide  on.  It  can  move  along  that  much  easier  than  the  one  below 
can  move  along  that  gravel  bed  below  it.  That's  much  more 
difficult."  So,  blocks  do  move  with  respect  to  each  other.  We  have 
seen  up  to  a  number  of  feet  of  motion. 

Carothers:  The  picture  I've  gotten  from  what  you've  said  is 
that  we  could  look  at  Rainier  Mesa  as  a  large  piece  of  material  that 
has  a  lot  of  more  or  less  vertical  joints  and  faults,  and  a  number  of 
more  or  less  horizontal  layers,  which  were  laid  down  at  different 
times.  And  so,  in  a  way  it's  a  fairly  loose  pile  of  stuff,  on  a  very  big 
scale. 

Orkild:  That's  correct,  on  a  very  large  scale.  Now,  the 
Marshmallow  site,  in  Area  1 6,  was  essentially  completely  shattered, 
broken,  and  cracked.  When  they  mined  into  it,  it  was  just  sitting 
there  as  a  mass  of  rocks,  held  there  by  gravity,  and  it  was  slowly 
creeping  down  the  hill.  Each  time  it  got  bumped,  it  jiggled  a  little 
bit  and  settled  back  again.  The  cracks  readjusted,  and  the  gases 
would  seep  out  here  and  there.  Many,  many  years  from  now  Rainier 
Mesa  will  be  like  that  -  -  essentially  a  pile  of  rubble.  The  blocks  are 
getting  smaller  and  smaller  as  time  goes  on. 

Ristvet:  Block  motion  is  interesting  to  me  is  because  I  got 
involved  with  it  when  I  was  first  at  DNA.  That  was  in  relation  to 
survivability  of  underground  structures,  from  both  a  defensive  and 
a  strategic  aspect.  The  big  question  was,  at  what  stress  levels  do 
these  motions  occur?  I  said,  "Well,  it's  really  more  of  a  displace¬ 
ment  level  than  a  stress  level." 


Block  Motion 


349 


There's  two  kinds  of  block  motions  in  a  gross  sense,  and  one 
has  a  subset.  There's  shock-induced  block  motion,  where  you're 
driving  it  with  the  displacements  of  the  cavity.  There's  also  shock- 
triggered  block  motions,  and  we've  seen  a  little  of  that  at  the  Test 
Site.  The  high  yield  shots  that  were  done  up  on  Pahute  Mesa 
triggered  a  lot  of  aftershock  activity,  which  results  from  built-in 
strains  along  the  pre-existing  tectonic  discontinuities  and  faults.  All 
we  have  ever  seen  in  Rainier  Mesa,  in  all  the  tunnel  events,  has  been 
the  shock-induced  kind  of  motion. 

Now,  there  are  two  types  of  shock-induced  block  motion. 
There  are  the  motions  that  occur  along  already  existing 
discontinuities,  usually  bedding  planes  with  some  sort  of  material 
along  them  that  has  very  low  shear  strength.  It's  usually  a  very  thin 
layer  of  montmorillonite  clay,  typically  forty  or  fifty  percent  or  so. 
Those  motions  are  well  documented.  Typically  they  occur  out  to 
between  two  and  three  cavity  radii.  It's  rare  to  see  them  out  beyond 
that,  but  they  have  occurred  out  to  as  far  as  six  cavity  radii.  But, 
those  motions  are  very  small. 

We've  also  seen  motion  on  faults.  It's  interesting  because  the 
faults  move,  if  they're  lubricated,  but  they  also  seem  to  be  very 
affected  by  the  in-situ  stress  field.  At  the  Test  Site  the  faults  that 
strike  northwest  don't  move,  but  the  faults  that  strike  northeast  do 
move.  Those  happen  to  be  oriented  properly  with  respect  to  the 
minimum  and  maximum  in-situ  stresses,  which  are  almost  horizon¬ 
tal,  and  ninety  degrees  to  each  other  at  the  Test  Site.  One  is  equal 
to  the  overburden,  and  the  other  is  significantly  less  -  -  two,  three, 
four  hundred  psi  less,  and  that's  because  of  the  crustal  extension 
going  on. 

The  other  kind  of  block  motion  is  when  you  get  in  very  close 
to  the  cavity,  and  I  don't  think  this  kind  extends  more  than  about 
half  a  cavity  radius  from  the  edge  of  the  cavity.  Again  this  is  in  the 
tuffs,  in  the  tunnels,  and  only  in  the  horizontal  equitorial  plane.  This 
kind  of  motion  stops  very  close-in,  and  that's  not  where  the  residual 
stress  field  is.  You  see  lots  of  schlickensided  faces  -  -  shears  -  -  and 
they  are  almost  always  either  perfectly  radial  to  the  cavity,  or 
perfectly  tangential  and  they're  quite  frequent.  This  is  from 
observations. 


350 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  How  much  motion  do  you  see?  A  few  inches,  a  few 

feet? 

Ristvet:  Anything  from  a  few  millimeters  up  to  .  .  .  probably 
some  of  the  largest  motions  we  have  seen,  which  were  on  Diablo 
Hawk,  were  motions  of  thirteen  or  fourteen  feet,  on  a  bedding 
plane.  There  was  also  a  fault  that  was  in  part  related  to  that  bedding 
plane  motion  which  moved,  and  totally  cut  off  the  drift.  There  was 
about  six  and  a  half  feet  of  horizontal  motion,  and  two  feet  of 
vertical,  and  that  essentially  cut  the  drift  off. 

Carothers:  It  would  seem  that  the  Iikelyhood  of  getting  such 
motion  would  depend  on  the  way  the  drift  was  oriented  in  the  stress 
field. 

Ristvet:  Very  true. 

Carothers:  Do  you  pay  any  attention  to  that? 

Ristvet:  Well,  yes  and  no.  As  far  as  siting  an  event,  it  doesn't 
seem  to  make  a  lot  of  difference.  In  the  case  of  the  group  of 
experiments  from  Miner's  Iron  through  Mighty  Oak,  it  did  make  a 
difference  because  it  really  reduced  the  potential  for  the  kinds  of 
block  motion  that  would  help  keep  stemming  in.  It's  interesting  that 
on  the  events  where  we  have  had  good  block  motion,  where  it's  been 
oriented  such  that  the  residual  stress  field  and  the  faults  crossing  the 
drifts  would  probably  move,  we've  always  had  very  good 
containment.  And  certainly  Misty  Rain  was  not  oriented  properly, 
even  though  we  did  see  one  very  major  block  motion,  which  was 
along  a  pre-existing  fault. 

Carothers:  Ifyou  think  it's  good,  then  itwould  seem  you  could 
turn  the  drift  a  little  and  have  it  the  way  you  think  would  enhance 
this  block  motion. 

Ristvet:  Yes,  we  could,  but  if  we  did  that  we'd  run  out  of  real 
estate  very  quickly.  It's  a  desirable  secondary  feature,  I  think.  Of 
course,  on  Misty  Rain,  it  was  almost  an  undesirable  feature.  The 
only  two  faults  in  Misty  Rain  that  were  mapped,  that  crossed  the 
drift,  were  the  two  that  moved.  And  one  caught  the  TAPS,  which 
then  didn't  close.  We  modified  the  TAPS  after  that  experience  to 
give  us  more  clearance,  so  if  it  ever  happened  again  the  door  would 
probably  come  down  and  seal.  What  happened  is,  the  shroud  is  very 
thin  metal,  whereas  the  rest  is  very  thick.  Now,  the  movement  was 
very  small.  It  was  less  than  an  inch,  but  it  was  enough  to  buckle  the 


Block  Motion  351 

metal,  which  caught  the  door,  just  barely.  When  we  went  in  there, 
even  though  the  door  looked  very  secure,  one  did  not  want  to  go 
underneath  it  without  putting  a  little  bracing  there. 

Carothers:  You  also  talk  about  residual  stress,  and  it  might  be 
that  if  you  do  get  such  motion,  it's  going  to  inhibit  or  decrease  the 
formation  of  the  residual  stress. 

Ristvet:  What  it  does  is,  it  spreads  it  out  over  a  bigger  area,  or 
a  bigger  volume.  Consequently  the  peak  is  greatly  degraded,  and 
allows  the  relaxation  to  take  place  a  lot  faster,  because  you're  having 
rock  creep  occuring  along  these  planes  as  the  residual  stress  is  trying 
to  set  up.  What  I'm  talking  about  is  not  new,  and  the  modelers  who 
work  with  the  continuum  models  have  been  very  aware  that  is 
probably  what  real  life  is  like.  We've  just  always  felt  it  comforting 
when  we  thought  these  motions  didn't  degrade  it  as  much  as  perhaps 
it  does. 

Bass:  We  have  noticed  these  random  motions;  indeed,  these 
disordered  motions  occur.  There's  no  question  about  that,  but  I 
don't  believe  they're  controling. 

Carl  Smith  had  a  very  interesting  experience  on  one  event.  He 
and  I  put  in  a  thing  called  a  SCEMS  -  -  a  Self  Contained  Environmen¬ 
tal  Measurement  System.  Sandia  has  been  doing  them  off  and  on 
for  years  and  years.  You  put  in  this  very  strong  unit,  and  then  go 
back  and  recover  it  after  the  shot.  And  hope  it  has  worked. 
Actually  it  has  worked  on  some  occasions.  Right  now  it's  a  dead 
issue;  it  should  never  be  fielded  again.  The  last  time  it  cost  a  quarter 
of  a  million  dollars,  and  the  data  return  was  absolutely  zero. 

Carl  did  get  some  data  on  an  event  not  too  long  ago.  He  had 
one  of  these  units  up  at  five  kilobars,  and  that  was  the  closest  we 
thought  we  could  go.  In  order  to  make  the  measurements  Carl  put 
some  cables  out  from  it,  to  gauges  maybe  twenty  feet  in  front  of  it. 
We  also  put  gauges  in  the  body  of  the  machine,  so  when  those  cables 
got  broken  we  would  still  get  something.  I  had  designed  these 
SCEMS  in  the  past,  and  in  an  attempt  to  make  it  move  with  the 
surrounding  rocks  we  put  big  fins  around  it  to  tie  it  to  the  mountain. 
That  works,  and  they  do  tie  it  to  the  mountain.  The  accelerometers 
on-board  and  off-board  did  show  the  same  thing.  And  when  you 
integrate  them  they  showed  the  same  thing,  within  limits. 


352 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


When  Carl  went  back  in,  the  guys  who  did  the  reentry  were 
very  careful  about  it  and  took  a  lot  of  good  pictures,  and  you  can 
see  this  chaotic  motion  of  the  type  Russ  Duff  talks  about.  Here  sits 
the  SCEMS,  and  there  sits  the  outboard  gauge.  Between  the  gauge 
and  the  SCEMS  the  cable  does  the  damnedest  didos  you've  ever 
seen.  It's  moved  three  feet  this  way,  and  two  feet  that  way,  and 
everything  else.  And  the  motion  had  cut  the  cable  in  various  places. 
That  rock  does  not  just  move  radially  out,  in  detail,  but  the  general 
motion  is  outward. 

Carl  has  looked  at  permanent  displacements  for  eight  or  ten 
events,  and  put  them  all  together,  and  has  gotten  a  very  nice  curve 
out  of  it.  Even  up  in  the  kilobar  regime,  and  these  would  be  up  to 
five  and  eight  kilobars,  which  is  about  as  close  as  you  can  get  back 
in  and  measure  and  have  any  accuracy,  outward  motion  is  absolutely 
a  straight  function.  Inside  there's  terrific  chaos,  but  that  doesn't 
necessarily  destroy  the  possibility  of  a  stress  cage. 

Smith:  There  aren't  any  easy  answers  about  block  motion.  The 
questions  are  all  research  problems. 

We  did  field,  about  three  shots  ago,  one  of  the  so-called 
SCEMS  units  -  -  Self  Contained  whatever.  You  can't  make  the  cables 
survive  as  close  in  as  the  gauges  were,  so  you  have  this  self  contained 
recording  unit.  Then,  you  dig  back,  recover  it,  and  read  out  the 
recording.  There  was  about  twenty  feet  separation  between  with 
the  gauge  and  the  recorder.  And,  there  was  a  big  fault  that  went 
through  the  space  where  they  were  separated.  On  the  reentry  we 
found  that  the  fault  had  moved,  but  a  foot  this  side  of  the  hole  with 
the  cable  in  it  there  was  another  hole,  and  that  hole  was  intact.  That 
fault  moved  six  or  eight  inches,  and  it  was  a  massive  fault  that 
extended  for  numerous  feet,  but  the  movement  didn't  extend  in  one 
direction  at  all,  because  it  didn't  cut  the  other  hole. 

That  makes  you  think,  "Yes,  these  big  fractures  occur,  and 
move  at  least  six  inches."  But  if  you  look  at  them  on  a  global  extent, 
they  just  don't  extend  anywhere.  You've  got  all  this  massive  block 
movement,  butwhen  you  go  and  look  atthat  fracture  very  carefully, 
and  look  at  the  other  evidence,  you  discover  that  there  are  just 
numerous  of  these  short  fractures.  Now,  when  you  mine  back  and 
see  what  looks  like  massive  block  movement,  it  may  be  a  whole 


Block  Motion 


353 


series  of  short  fractures  where  each  of  them  may  have  moved  six  or 
eight  inches.  But,  I  don't  think  those  fractures  extend  for  tens  of 
feet.  As  I  said,  I  think  it's  a  research  problem. 

Bass:  We  also  now  have  some  data  about  when  those  blocks 
move.  We  had  never  had  a  timing  of  when  blocks  moved  until  Misty 
Echo.  On  Misty  Echo  I  got  a  lucky  break.  I  found  a  place  to  put 
instrumentation  on  a  fault  that  Dean  Townsend  absolutely  promised 
me  would  move.  And,  it  was  out  at  the  tenth  kilobar  regime.  So, 
being  at  a  tenth  kilobar  I  could  get  cables  to  last.  I  had  three-axis 
accelerometers  on  each  side  of  that  fault,  and  we  watched  it  move, 
and  we  know  when  it  moved.  And  we  know  that  it  moved 
contemporaneously  with  the  peak  particle  velocity.  It  moved  right 
away.  So,  I  think  block  motions  are  occuring  during  the  peak  of  the 
particle  velocity,  which  I  think  is  a  helpful  thing.  That's  before  the 
stress  cage  is  formed.  That's  important. 

For  a  long  time  people  thought  blocks  or  faults  moved  in 
seconds.  But  on  Misty  Echo  they  moved  right  at  the  peak  particle 
velocity,  and  a  funny  thing  happened  to  these  blocks.  They  were 
sitting  there,  side  by  side.  In  radial  motion  outward,  they  moved 
together.  In  horizontal  motion  they  moved  together.  In  vertical 
motion  they  didn't.  The  one  farthest  from  the  device  rose  up  over 
the  other  block,  which  went  out  and  down.  That  lasted  about  for 
six  hundred  milliseconds,  and  then  they  moved  off  together.  The 
bigger  block  behind  became  the  controlling  block,  and  started 
moving  down.  This  is  well  documented. 

The  motion  lasted  a  second,  and  we  ended  up  saying  it  moved 
seven  centimeters,  that  there  should  be  a  seven  centimeter  vertical 
displacement  at  that  point.  That  was  at  one  second.  We  said, 
"Okay,  that's  interesting.  That  should  be  interesting  for  seismic 
source  mechanisms,  and  a  few  things  like  that."  We  asked  joe 
LaComb  to  go  back  in  and  verify  this  by  reentry.  He  came  back  and 
said  that  there  was  no  motion  at  all.  What  happened  was  that  the 
shotcrete  didn't  break.  I  said,  "Damn  it,  there  was  motion.  Go  back 
and  look  again."  joe  listened  to  me,  thank  God,  and  he  sent  FstS 
back  in  again  to  knock  the  shotcrete  off.  I  said  it  moved  seven 
centimeters  -  -  it  had  moved  five.  I  think  that's  a  fantastic  bit  of 
data,  as  to  when  it  moved,  and  how  much  it  moved. 


354 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


The  question  about  if  there  is  all  this  motion,  what  does  it  do 
to  the  stress  cage  -  - 1  think  the  answer  is  that  the  motion  takes  place 
before  the  stress  cage  is  formed.  The  stress  cage  forms  on  rebound. 

Carothers:  You  said  the  motion  you  measured  took  place 
during  a  period  of  like  a  second. 

Bass:  But  that  was  way,  way  out.  That  was  long,  slow  stuff. 
The  blocks  were  still  moving  way,  way  away  from  the  working  point. 
But  that's  a  good  point.  You've  caught  me  in  a  problem  there,  but 
what  we  measured  was  a  long  way  from  the  working  point.  And 
those  blocks  were  moving  together  at  that  time. 

Carothers:  The  stress  cage  sets  up,  if  there  is  such  a  thing, 
presumably  in  less  than  a  second.  So,  if  all  these  blocks  are  going 
to  do  all  this  moving  around  before  that  stress  field  sets  up,  they 
have  to  do  it  in  less  than  a  second. 

Bass:  All  the  close  in  ones  that  affect  containment.  I  think  they 
are  all  pretty  well  calmed  down  by  then. 

Duff:  On  the  reentry  of  Misty  Rain  they  drove  a  tunnel 
between  the  initial  Iine-of-sight  tunnel  and  the  work  tunnel.  It  was 
roughly  six  meters  to  the  side  of  the  main  tunnel.  They  observed 
nine  faults,  which  were  not  recognized  pre-shot,  over  a  range  of 
some  twenty  meters  or  so.  They  didn't  get  very  close  to  the  cavity 
boundary,  but  there  were  new  sources  of  displacement  even  that  far 
out. 

]enkins:  In  order  to  get  a  feel  for  the  spacing  of  faults  all  you 
have  to  do  is  look  at  the  outcrops  surrounding  Yucca  Flat.  You  can 
see  that  the  density  of  faulting  is  much  greater  than  we  show  in  the 
cross  sections.  I  think  that  holds  pretty  well  throughout  the  tuff 
units,  especially  the  stronger  ones,  like  those  buried  under  the 
alluvium,  for  instance. 

A  number  of  very  small  movements  along  the  faults  would  give 
the  impression  that  the  blocks  are  shifting.  And  they  do,  but  on  a 
scale  that's  difficult  to  illustrate.  In  other  words,  instead  of  making 
very  tiny  lines  on  the  cross  section,  you  put  in  the  dip  of  the  unit, 
and  the  boundary  of  what  you  think  will  be  the  major  faults. 


Block  Motion 


355 


Carothers:  So,  if  I  want  to  talk  about  very  small  fractures, 
faults  if  you  will,  I  will  find  them  every  couple  of  meters  in  the  Test 
Site?  That's  typical  of  basin-range  geology? 

Jenkins:  Yes,  it  is. 

Carothers:  It  is  hard  for  me  to  visualize  what  happens  when  a 
block  of  material  the  size  of  this  building  moves  a  foot  or  so.  Where 
does  the  material  go  that  used  to  be  where  the  block  moved  to? 

Jenkins:  Well,  along  faults,  especially  rotational  faults,  you 
have  a  lot  of  problems  with  conservation  of  material.  It's  awfully 
hard  to  do.  The  material  goes  some  place,  and  we  never  seem  to 
know  where  that  is.  But,  we  can  see  the  fact  that  the  block  has 
moved.  It  was  here,  and  now  it's  down  there.  Or  over  there.  It's 
terribly  difficult  to  draw  an  accurate  cross  section  because  of  this 
very  fact.  Whenever  you  start  pulling  the  world  apart,  something 
goes  wrong  such  that  you  lose  part  of  the  material  that  was  in  there. 

Duff:  We  did  a  fairly  careful  job  of  trying  to  measure  the 
displacement  of  an  interface  on  Mighty  Epic.  This  was  an  event 
where  the  Paleozoic  rock  was  coming  up  underneath  the  working 
point,  in  one  direction  away  from  the  line-of-sight  tunnel,  at  right 
angles  to  it.  The  interface  got  within  seventy  to  ninety  meters  of  a 
horizontal  tunnel  that  was  perpendicular  to  the  line-of-sight  tunnel. 
A  fairly  elaborate  experimental  program  was  undertaken  to  try  to 
measure  the  displacement  of  the  interface  that  was  predicted  to 
occur. 

The  Paleozoic,  being  hard,  strong  rock  would  not  move,  the 
tuffs  would  move  over  the  top  of  it,  and  one  should  see  a  sliding 
along  this  interface.  Such  sliding  would  represent  a  potential  threat 
to  underground  deeply  buried  assets  of  one  sort  or  another,  such  as 
a  deeply  buried  command  post,  or  missile  silo,  for  example.  So, 
they  wanted  to  know,  could  it  be  predicted?  This  elaborate 
measurement  program  was  undertaken,  and  indeed  the  expected 
displacement  occurred.  The  only  trouble  was,  it  didn't  occur  at  the 
interface  we  were  looking  at.  It  occurred  at  a  weakness  in  the  tuff, 
some  distance  above  the  interface.  There  was  a  weakness  there  that 
we  hadn't  known  about.  That  is  an  example  of  a  weakness  that  was 
exercised  in  a  particularly  dramatic  way.  Motions  of  a  meter  or  two 


356 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


occurred.  We  were  able  to  find  it  after  the  shot,  but  we  didn't  find 
it  before  the  shot.  We  went  back  and  looked  at  pre-shot  records, 
and  cores,  and  we  were  unable  to  identify  it. 

I  think  that  there  are  probably  a  very  large  number  of  other 
displacements  that  occur  that  we  never  recognize  because  we  don't 
know  what  was  there  before  the  shot.  We  do  relatively  little  looking 
close-in  to  an  explosion.  The  Laboratories  never,  or  almost  never, 
do,  and  DNA  is  restricted  in  its  efforts  by  money,  and  time,  and 
difficulty,  and  all  the  other  things  that  really  do  apply  in  the  real 
world. 

Carothers:  You  were  talking  about  the  world  being 
inhomogeneous. 

Duff:  Intrinsically  inhomogeneous. 

Carothers:  Let  me  offer  a  thought.  The  world  is  inhomogeneous 
on  any  scale  that  you  care  to  use  to  look  at  it.  If  you  want  to  start 
with  a  scale  of  a  few  thousand  miles  or  so,  there's  space,  and  then 
there's  atmosphere,  and  then  there's  dirt.  If  you  want  to  go  to  an 
atomic  scale,  there  is  silicon,  and  carbon,  and  oxygen.  On  a 
somewhat  larger  scale  there  are  molecules,  then  grains  of  minerals, 
and  then  you  to  get  pebbles,  and  cobbles,  and  on  and  on.  How  that 
affects  your  predictions,  it  seems  to  me,  is  a  question  that  can  only 
be  answered  if  you  tell  me  the  wavelength  of  the  phenomena  you're 
concerned  with.  Would  you  comment  on  that? 

Duff:  I  think  that's  a  very  crucial  point,  and  one  that  does 
indeed  need  discussion.  I  think  the  scale  of  the  disturbance  that 
we're  concerned  with  in  a  nuclear  test  is,  or  can  be,  characterized 
by  one  of  the  characteristic  dimensions  of  the  test.  Let's  call  that 
one  the  cavity  radius. 

Carothers:  That  would  seem  to  be  a  reasonable  dimension  to 
choose. 

Duff:  Yes.  Therefore,  I  think  inhomogeneities  that  occur  on 
scales  that  are  of  that  order  of  magnitude  can  influence  the 
phenomenology.  And  my  point  is  that  the  modeling  that  we  have 
done,  largely  that  DNA  has  done,  is  based  on  measurements  of 
pieces  of  rock  core  which  are  measured  in  centimeters.  Whereas, 
we  know  from  reentry  observations  that  there  are  non-uniform 
motions  that  are  occurring  on  dimensions  of  meters  or  tens  of 


Block  Motion 


357 


meters.  I  think  this  points  up  a  disconnect,  an  intellectual  discon¬ 
nect,  between  the  phenomena  we  are  concerned  with  and  the  data 
that  we're  using  to  try  to  describe  it. 

If  we  find  that  motions  are  dominated  by  what  happens  at 
faults,  interfaces,  bedding  planes  -  -  non-uniformities  of  one  sort  or 
another,  as  was  pointed  out  by  Livermore  in  the  Rainier  work  in 
I  960  or  so  -  -  then  we  are  remiss  in  basing  our  study  of  phenom¬ 
enology  on  the  response  of  homogeneous  material,  measured  on  the 
scale  of  centimeters. 

Carothers:  Dan,  if  you're  going  to  think  about  loads  on 
hardware,  and  plugs,  and  so  on,  what  about  the  observed  fact  that 
large  blocks  of  rock  move?  How  do  you  take  account  of  that? 

Patch:  I  think  dealing  with  block  motion  before  the  fact  is 
almost  an  exercise  in  futility.  The  reason  I  say  that  is  because  you 
can  predict,  based  on  a  number  of  rules  of  thumb,  and  empirical 
evidence,  and  some  modeling  too,  kind  of  the  region  in  which  you 
would  expect  block  motion  and  maybe  make  a  guess  as  to  what  the 
amplitude  is  going  to  be.  And  you  might  be  relatively  close,  if 
you're  lucky.  But  you  can't  actually  say,  "This  block  is  going  to 
move.  This  one,  not  that  one,  and  this  is  how  far  it's  going  to 
move."  Our  experience  is  that  sometimes  a  very  minor  feature  will 
move  a  lot,  and  a  very  major  feature  won't  move  at  all.  To  figure 
out  exactly  how  this  is  going  to  play  out,  pre-shot,  is  not  in  the  cards. 

Carothers:  I  believe  that.  Apparently  there  was  block  motion 
on  Misty  Rain,  and  it  severed  the  pipe.  Some  people  have  said, 
"That  was  pretty  lucky,  because  if  that  hadn't  happened  it  might 
have  behaved  like  Mighty  Oak."  Is  that  true? 

Patch:  I  know  there  are  a  number  of  very  smart  people  who 
believe  that  very  strongly.  And  I  don't.  Part  of  my  feeling  on  block 
motion  is  that  it  perforce  comes  relatively  late.  I  wouldn't  disagree 
with  folks  who  say  it  gets  started  right  away,  but  it's  a  cumulative 
thing,  and  it  has  to  occur  on  time  scales  that  are  comparable  to  the 
cavity  growth  scales.  So,  you  really  get  these  substantial  offsets  late 
in  the  dynamic  motion.  I  don't  know  any  other  way  it  can  happen. 


358 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Presumably  large  amounts  of  material  are  moving. 
If  you're  concerned  with  the  survival  of  hardware,  that  postulated 
mechanism  would  be  a  concern,  and  something  you  would  have  to 
think  about.  What  you  do  about  it,  I  don't  know. 

Patch:  We  perhaps  have  been  lucky,  but  the  only  instance  I  can 
think  of  where  block  motion  apparently  affected  the  closure  was  on 
Midas  Myth,  where  there  seemed  to  be  some  kind  of  offset  motion 
that  torqued  the  housing  on  the  TAPS  and  kept  the  door  from 
closing  all  the  way.  But  by  and  large,  because  block  motion  is,  let 
me  say,  pervasive,  we've  been  fairly  lucky  in  not  having  something 
go  right  through  our  pieces  of  hardware. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  have  an  amazing  propensity  on  these 
low  yield  shots,  purely  by  the  luck  of  the  draw,  to  put  the  FAC  right 
behind  a  fault.  On  almost  every  one  of  those  shots,  maybe  not  the 
last  couple,  but  certainly  there  was  a  string  of  about  three  or  four 
at  least,  where  there  was  a  fairly  major  fault  right  in  front  of  the  FAC 
itself.  Indeed,  on  one  of  them,  I  think  Diamond  Beach,  it  actually 
cut  right  through  the  nose  of  the  FAC  if  you  drew  the  plane.  They 
have  not  threatened  the  survival  of  those  closures;  that  is,  the 
closures  have  all  survived  post-shot. 

Now,  such  motions  did  cause  a  whole  lot  of  unusual  local 
motion  in  the  stemming  itself,  in  the  vicinity  of  the  FAC,  on 
Diamond  Beech  in  particular,  where  grout  was  extruded  out  and 
around  it.  There  were  some  strange  things  that  were  difficult  to 
figure  out.  So  I  guess  I  would  say  block  motion  hasn't  seemed  to 
pose  a  real  threat  to  the  closure  hardware,  but  there  are  certainly 
cases  where  it  has  severed  the  tunnel,  where  there  has  been  almost 
a  full  offset.  It's  made  grout  go  strange  places  you  wouldn't  predict 
pre-shot  very  well. 

Carothers:  Here  you  are,  scratching  your  head,  and  you're 
calculating,  and  you're  doing  the  best  job  you  can.  And  lurking 
somewhere  over  in  that  mountain  is  this  big  block,  maybe.  Or 
maybe  not.  Maybe  it's  going  to  move.  Maybe  not.  Maybe  it's  going 
to  move  an  inch,  maybe  it's  going  to  move  ten  feet.  What's  it  going 
to  do  to  the  hardware?  Basically  you  have  no  mechanism  to  deal 
with  that,  or  I  can't  imagine  how  you  could. 


Block  Motion 


359 


Patch:  I  think  the  way  we  deal  with  that  is  probably  pragmati¬ 
cally,  and  that  is  to  say  that  we  don't  want  a  design  that  depends  on 
the  survival  of  any  one  feature.  And  so  we're  willing  to  take  our 
chances.  Generally  when  these  blocks  move  it's  the  whole  mountain 
that  moves,  and  trying  to  resist  it  somehow  by  building  an  extra 
strong  structure  is,  I  think,  not  very  likely  to  be  successful. 

Carothers:  Personally,  1  have  a  hard  time  conceptuallizing  this 
block  motion.  Presumably  this  block,  which  is  the  size  of  this  room, 
or  this  building,  moves.  Something  had  to  get  out  of  the  way. 

Patch:  You've  put  your  finger  on  a  problem  that  I  have  all  the 
time.  That's  right;  it  doesn't  have  a  void  to  move  into.  Simplisti- 
cally,  if  you  take  a  box  of  sugar  cubes  and  start  trying  to  move  them 
around,  if  you  start  trying  to  grow  a  cavity  in  the  middle  of  a  box 
of  sugar  cubes,  very  strange  things  happen,  unless  they  can  deform 
in  some  way. 

Peterson:  Some  people  have  stated  that  the  reason  we've  had 
problems  with  some  of  the  events.  Mighty  Oak  being  the  worst,  was 
the  fact  that  we  went  to  larger  pipe  tapers.  They  have  postulated 
that  once  we  went  to  the  larger  pipe  tapers,  the  only  reason  we've 
had  containment  is  because  we've  had  very  fortuitous  block  motion. 
That  block  motion  has  served  to  sever  the  LOS  drift,  and  prevent 
things  from  leaking.  Now,  there's  quite  a  bit  of  evidence  on  some 
shots  that  we  have  had  block  motion.  For  example,  it  looks  as 
though  block  motion  cut  the  drift  on  Misty  Rain.  People  speculate 
that  if  it  hadn't  cut  it  quite  as  much  as  it  did.  Misty  Rain  would  have 
looked  like  Mighty  Oak. 

There  are  clearly  identifiable  instances  where  a  block  of 
material  has  moved.  Misty  Rain  is  one  example,  and  I  think  it's  true 
on  most  of  the  events.  It  is  documented  on  numbers  of  events. 
There  was  some  on  Mighty  Oak  as  well,  but  you  can  then  always 
argue  that  it  wasn't  enough. 

Carothers:  You  could  also  argue  that  was  what  caused  the 
problem. 

Peterson:  Well,  that's  the  next  point  I  was  getting  to.  I  can  go 
to  the  other  extreme  of  looking  at,  say,  what  is  called  the  "tired 
mountain,"  which  I  think  is  maybe  more  properly  said  as  shock 
conditioning  occurs  out  to  a  larger  radius  then  we  can  measure  by 
going  in  and  doing  sonic  measurements,  or  accoustic  measurements, 


360 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


or  seismic  measurements.  Or,  than  we  can  determine  from  doing 
material  properties  tests.  I  think  Russ  Duff  speculates  it  is  because 
of  this  that  one  can  say  there  is  enhanced  block  motion.  In  other 
words,  if  you  have  more  and  more  events  in  a  place,  you  sort  of 
jiggle  the  joints,  and  it  allows  them  to  slip  easier,  and  that  can 
enhance  the  block  motion.  If  you  enhance  the  block  motion,  then 
there's  no  reason  for  a  residual  stress  field,  as  we  think  we  get  when 
we  do  our  standard  one  or  two  dimensional  calculations,  to  form. 

Carothers:  Wouldn't  it  depend  on  how  big  the  blocks  are? 

Peterson:  That's  true.  But  you  don't  know  that  such  a  stress 
field  forms  anyway,  and  there's  a  possibility  that  it  doesn't.  And  of 
course,  if  you  don't  develop  the  stresses  so  you  really  squeeze  the 
tunnel  shut,  and  form  a  stemming  plug  as  we  calculate,  then  of 
course  you  need  the  block  motion  to  cut  the  tunnel. 

Carothers:  Well,  I  think  there's  unequivocal  evidence,  on  a 
number  of  tunnel  events,  that  the  tunnel  after  the  shot  was  smaller 
than  it  was  to  begin  with.  And  it's  not  that  it's  been  sheared,  it's 
just  smaller.  That  would  seem  to  me  to  imply  that  there  has  been 
a  considerable  stress  in  those  materials. 

Peterson:  Absolutely.  I  agree  with  what  you  say.  What  I  was 
trying  to  say  was  that  if  we  follow  the  block  motion  argument  to 
some  extreme,  ifyou  getmuch  of  it  I  think  itcouid  iowerthe  stresses 
in  certain  regions.  It  might  enhance  them  in  certain  other  regions. 
If  you  happen  to  have  an  event  in  which  you  get  block  motion  that 
lowers  the  stresses  along  the  stemming  column,  then  you  may  not 
set  up  a  stemming  plug.  Ifyou  do  not  set  up  the  stemming  plug,  and 
you  still  don't  wish  it  to  leak,  then  you  better  hope  the  block  motion 
was  enough  so  it  severed  the  tunnel.  Somehow  you  have  to  have 
something  that  stops  the  cavity  gas  from  leaking  out. 

If  you  g£t  block  motion  to  the  extent  that  you  do  not  get  good 
formation  of  a  stemming  plug,  then  you  probably  need  the  block 
motion  in  order  to  stop  the  leakage.  It's  a  Catch  22,  which  is  the 
point  I  was  trying  to  make.  If  I  follow  the  argument  to  the  extreme, 
it's  almost  to  the  point  that  if  you  get  significant  block  motion,  then 
you  probably  need  the  block  motion  in  order  to  prevent  leakage. 

Or,  you  could  look  at  the  other  extreme  -  -  if  you  don't  get  the 
block  motion,  then  you  probably  set  up  a  stress  field  similar  to  what 
we  calculate,  and  then  you  don't  need  the  block  motion.  Which  of 


Block  Motion  361 

these  is  right,  or  whether  it's  a  combination  of  the  two,  and  those 
are  the  ones  that  really  get  you  in  trouble,  the  ones  that  fall  in  the 
middle,  I  don't  know. 

Carothers:  It's  hard  for  the  layman  to  imagine  how  very  large 
blocks  of  rock,  perhaps  as  large  as  this  building,  move  around  in  the 
earth.  If  such  a  thing  happens,  then  lots  of  other  blocks  must  be 
moving  too. 

Peterson:  Yes.  I  am  not  an  expert  on  block  motion,  but  DNA 
has  a  fairly  large  program  that  studies  block  motion  for  some  of  their 
work.  They  have  done  a  lot  of  studies,  and  so  it's  a  very  well 
documented  phenomenon.  If  you  go  back  to  the  Rainier  reports, 
one  of  the  things  discussed  in  those  reports  is  that  it  wasn't  just  a 
uniform  expansion  of  the  material.  There  really  were  very  large 
blocks  of  material  that  moved  relative  to  one  another. 

Some  of  the  data  indicate  that  the  motion  comes  somewhat  late 
in  terms  of  some  of  the  time  scales  we  talk  about.  It  takes  time  for 
a  very  large  block  of  material  to  move.  We're  not  talking  small 
things.  They  are  very,  very  big  pieces. 

Carothers:  Dimensions  of  hundreds  of  feet,  possibly. 

Peterson:  Easily.  So  they  don't  move  instantly.  DNA  has 
much  information,  and  inside  about  two  cavity  radii  it's  very 
difficult  to  understand  what's  going  on.  One  of  the  reasons  is 
because  things  just  don't  move  radially  out.  You  can't  count  on 
everything  to  move  radially  out  from  the  source. 

Carothers:  Or  to  put  it  another  way,  you  cannot  count  on 
calculations  based  on  the  assumption  that  the  earth  is  a  homoge¬ 
neous  material.  Which  is  what  you  do  in  one  dimensional  calcula¬ 
tions. 

Peterson:  That's  true.  We  can  put  in  layers  in  some  of  our  two 
dimensional  calculations,  but  in  general  we  don't  know  enough  of 
what  is  there.  We  might  know  about  one  fault,  and  maybe  we  could 
put  it  in  a  calculation,  but  maybe  there  are  others  there  that  we 
don't  know  about,  that  are  maybe  just  as  important.  So  you  really 
don't  know  how  to  put  the  structure  in  a  calculation.  It's  difficult 
to  do  if  you  know  it,  and  if  you  don't  know  it,  it  just  gets  that  much 
more  difficult. 


362 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


I  don't  mean  to  imply  by  this  that  I  believe  it's  either  the  block 
motion  that's  made  the  changes  we  have  seen,  or  that  it's  the 
increase  in  pipe  taper  that's  made  those  changes.  I  have  found  both 
arguments  interesting,  because  the  increased  pipe  taper  one  says, 
"You  had  to  have  block  motion  in  order  to  get  containment  on  the 
recent  shots."  The  larger  damage  region  argument  says,  "We're 
developing  block  motions  because  we  were  continually  shaking  the 
ground  in  the  region  where  we  do  the  shots."  If  you  follow  it  to  the 
next  level,  you  can  say,  "If  you  have  block  motion,  then  you  need 
block  motion  to  get  containment."  But  you  could  follow  it  back  the 
other  way  and  say,  "If  I  don't  have  block  motion,  then  things  might 
work  the  way  they  always  have  sometime  in  the  past." 

Carothers:  There  is  another  set  of  detonations;  those  which 
occur  in  Yucca  Flat.  No  Iine-of-sight,  no  tunnel.  There's  just  the 
emplacement  hole  and  its  stemming.  I  don't  understand  how  the 
block  motion  argument  might  apply  to  those  shots.  Does  block 
motion  occur  only  because  the  tunnel  is  there?  Suppose  there  were 
no  tunnel. 

Peterson:  I  don't  believe  that  the  tunnel  has  anything  at  all  to 
do  with  the  block  motion,  or  very,  very  little  to  do  with  it.  I  think 
it's  the  motion  that  occurs  as  a  result  of  the  natural  discontinuities 
in  the  ground  before  the  shot.  I  think  the  block  motions  generally 
occur  independent  of  whether  that  little  tunnel  is  or  is  not  there.  I 
don't  think  the  tunnel  causes  block  motion. 

In  Yucca  Flat,  when  a  device  is  detonated  in  the  tuffs,  I  think 
blocks  probably  do  move  there  also,  but  in  a  stemmed  hole  I  don't 
believe  it  necessarily  bothers  you  at  all. 

Carothers:  Well,  the  evidence  is  that  it  doesn't.  Of  course,  in 
emplacement  holes  all  there  is  in  the  first  few  hundred  feet  is  a 
bunch  of  gravel  and  a  few  plugs. 

Peterson:  Yes.  And  so  they'll  never  see  it,  or  it  doesn't  really 
matter  to  them  at  all.  I  believe  it's  something  that  we  in  containment 
need  to  think  about,  however.  I  personally  don't  know  what  the 
answer  is. 

Carothers:  Let  me  disagree  with  you.  The  evidence  in  the  Flat 
is  that  whether  it  occurs  or  doesn't  occur  is  of  no  concern.  The 
concern,  really,  is  on  the  part  of  the  DNA  people  who  could  to  lose 


Block  Motion 


363 


their  experiments  and  samples.  It  does  not  seem  to  be  a  containment 
concern,  at  least  for  stemmed  emplacement  holes  that  do  not  have 
a  line-of-sight  pipe. 

Peterson:  You  are  absolutely  correct.  Since  I  work  for  DNA, 
I  think  of  close-in  containment  as  being  extremely  important.  In 
terms  of  release  to  the  atmosphere,  I  don't  think  it  is  a  containment 
issue  at  all. 


364 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Drill  rig  with  stabbing  tower  on  right  side. 


365 


14 

Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 

Probably  the  most  important  factor  in  the  containment  of  an 
underground  nuclear  detonation  is  the  depth  at  which  it  is  buried.  It 
is  fairly  certain  that  a  device  of  any  yield  detonated  at  the  center  of 
the  earth  would  not  release  any  activity  to  the  surface.  Conversly, 
a  device  of  however  small  a  yield,  detonated  on  the  surface,  would 
obviously  release  radioactivity  into  the  atmosphere.  So,  some¬ 
where  between  these  reducto  ad  absurdum  limits  there  is  a  depth  for 
a  given  yield  which  will  surely  prevent  a  release  of  radioactivity  to 
the  atmosphere.  Given  sufficient  depth,  and  proper  stemming  of  the 
necessary  emplacement  hole,  all  the  considerations  of  cavity  forma¬ 
tion,  residual  stress  cages,  material  properties,  calculational  mod¬ 
els,  geologic  setting,  and  so  forth  become  irrelevant. 

Like  most  other  statements  of  obvious,  simple  solutions  to 
complex  problems,  the  one  above  is  essentially  useless  in  the  face 
of  the  real-life  constraints  that  exist  in  dealing  with  the  problem. 
The  first  and  most  immediate  constraint  is  usually  money,  and  in  the 
preparations  for  an  underground  detonation  how  and  where  the 
device  is  placed  determines  a  large  fraction  of  what  the  eventual 
cost  will  be.  Drilling  six,  eight,  ten  foot  diameter  holes  is  not  an 
inexpensive  activity,  and  the  cost  per  foot  of  depth  increases  as  the 
hole  gets  deeper. 

As  noted  in  the  section  on  hydrology,  the  Test  Site  is  one  of  the 
few  place  in  the  world  where  the  watertable  is  as  deep  as  500  meters, 
but  devices  with  a  yield  above  about  sixty  to  seventy  kilotons  must 
be  emplaced  deeper  than  that.  Below  that  depth  the  hole  will  fill 
with  water.  To  keep  that  water  away  from  the  device  and  the 
equipment  that  is  emplaced,  the  hole  must  be  cased  with  a  liner  that 
will  be  water-tight;  a  costly  procedure. 

Expensive  electrical  cables  that  carry  the  firing  signals  to  the 
device,  the  necessary  power  to  the  diagnostic  equipment,  and  ones 
used  to  return  the  data  from  the  detectors  must  run  from  the  surface 
to  the  bottom  of  the  hole.  For  these  and  other  reasons  there  is  a 


366 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


substantial  financial  incentive  to  fire  the  device  at  the  minimum 
depth,  which  will  obviously  depend  on  the  yield,  required  for 
successful  containment. 

Higgins:  Starting  in  about  the  year  after  Rainier,  1958,  we 
started  the  Plowshare  program.  Plowshare,  as  it  was  then  envi¬ 
sioned,  was  going  to  include  a  lot  of  things,  like  stimulation  of  gas 
wells,  and  excavation;  the  nonmilitary  applications  of  nuclear 
explosives.  The  questions  raised  by  those  applications  extended 
beyond  just  the  cavity  puddle  and  the  radiochemical  analysis  of  the 
samples  from  the  explosion.  They  went  into  things  like,  "Well,  how 
far  do  the  fractures  extend?  Or  there  are  any  fractures?"  We  knew 
by  then  there  were  some.  "Where  is  the  heat,  and  how  much  of  it 
is  available  to  recover?"  And,  "Suppose  that,  instead  of  shooting 
the  shot  in  tuff  at  the  Test  Site,  we  fired  it  in  salt.  Wouldn't  all  the 
steam  stay  in  then?  Salt  is  impermeable,  plastic,  and  solid.  Won't 
all  the  steam  stay  in  the  bubble  and  be  ready  to  be  recovered?" 

So,  starting  in  1958,  the  Plowshare  program  put  a  lot  of  effort 
into  trying  to  answer  questions  like  that.  They  were  important 
questions,  and  we  didn't  have  answers  for  them.  We  began  to  be 
concerned  about  effects  other  than  just  the  rad  chem  sampling. 
Being  quite  naive  in  some  respects,  one  of  the  things  we  thought  was 
that  it  would  be  a  good  idea  to  try  a  series  of  Rainier-like  explosions. 
These  would  be  a  few  kilotons  at  most,  and  they  would  be  in  a  lot 
of  different  kinds  of  materials,  to  see  in  what  way  the  properties  of 
the  medium  influenced  the  effects  that  we  observed. 

These  were  to  be  pure  science  shots.  We  designed  a  set  which 
included  a  shot  in  granite,  a  shot  in  as  pure  salt  as  we  could  find,  a 
shot  in  some  kind  of  carbonate  rock,  which  at  that  time  we  called 
limestone.  I  believe  that  early  on  we  also  talked  about  a  shot  in 
basalt,  as  opposed  to  tuff,  which  really  isn't  much  like  any  other  rock 
in  the  world.  However,  it  turns  out  that  there  really  is  a  lot  of  tuff, 
so  it's  not  as  irrelevant  as  we  thought  at  one  time.  Being  mostly  not 
earth  scientists,  we  thought  that  the  world  really  had  a  lot  more 
granite,  and  salt,  and  sandstone  than  anything  else.  But  it  turns  out 
that  four-fifths  or  so  of  the  world  is  basalt.  Volcanics  really  are  the 
commonest  kind  of  rock,  and  the  so  the  Test  Site  isn't  an  unusual 
geologic  place  in  that  sense. 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


367 


The  first  one  we  proposed  was  Gnome,  in  salt,  and  it  was 
carried  out,  in  salt,  near  Carlsbad,  New  Mexico  on  December  10, 
1961.  Before  Gnome  was  fired  we  had  designed  other  shots;  the 
granite  shot,  and  the  one  in  sandstone,  and  various  others.  Hard  Hat 
was  originally  the  medium-effects  test  in  granite.  The  granite 
existed  at  NTS,  and  so  why  not  do  the  shot  there?  So  it  got  designed 
at  about  the  same  time  that  Gnome  got  designed. 

Excavation  was  always  part  of  the  grand  plan  of  Plowshare. 
Explosive  excavation  is  not  at  all  new.  It  was,  in  fact,  the  preferred 
method  for  excavation  in  swamps,  and  some  other  types  of  terrain, 
as  early  as  the  mid-nineteenth  century.  The  French,  particularly, 
did  a  lot  of  work  developing  high  explosive  excavation,  and  scaling 
laws,  and  theories  having  to  do  with  explosive  engineering.  There 
was,  and  is,  extensive  literature  on  the  subject,  but  it  all  dates  from 
before  1 900,  and  so  a  lot  of  modern  engineers  aren't  familiar  with 
it. 

Carothers:  Why  wasn't  there  some  material  from  after  1 920, 

say? 

Higgins:  Well,  technology  developed,  and  the  efficiency  of 
modern  machines  superseded  explosive  excavation  from  an  eco¬ 
nomic  point  of  view.  When  the  competitor  was  a  team  of  mules  and 
a  scraper,  after  Nobel's  development  of  dynamite  explosives  exca¬ 
vation  was  much  cheaper.  By  1900  that  was  about  the  end  of  it 
however,  because  engines  and  machines  got  to  be  very  good.  Now 
it's  almost  to  a  point  where  you  can  move  hard  rock  with  machines 
easier  than  you  can  blast  it  to  break  it. 

Going  back  to  1955,  there  was  a  surface  detonation  called 
Teapot  Ess.  It  was  not  part  of  the  Plowshare  program,  but  it  was  an 
underground  explosion,  deep  enough  so  the  fireball  would  be 
contained,  but  not  the  debris.  As  I  recall  it  was  buried  at  some  tens 
of  feet,  and  it  was  about  a  kiloton.  The  purpose  of  that  was  to 
understand  the  effects  as  a  potential  antitank  weapon,  and  to 
confirm  the  old  French  scaling  curves  for  producing  craters.  Would 
the  scaling  laws  developed  with  dynamite  work  with  a  nuclear  yield, 
or  asking  the  question  the  other  way  around,  was  the  nuclear  energy 
as  useful  as  the  high  explosive  energy?  There  was  quite  a  school  of 
thought  that  said,  "A  nuclear  kiloton  really  isn't  as  big  as  a  thousand 
tons  of  TNT." 


368 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Well,  the  Teapot  Ess  explosion  proved  that  the  nuclear  energy 
was  as  efficient.  To  the  degree  one  can  determine  from  measuring 
the  size  of  the  crater,  it  was  just  about  as  good  as  high  explosives. 
The  people  in  the  Plowshare  program,  starting  in  a  few  years  later, 
began  to  scale  things  and  said,  "All  right,  if  a  kiloton  works  as  well 
as  a  thousand  tons  of  TNT,  then  how  about  a  megaton?"  And  they 
began  to  realize  that  things  like  a  Panama  Canal  could  be  excavated 
with  explosions  in  the  megaton  and  submegaton  range,  placed  at 
depths  of  600  feet  or  so. 

Carothers:  I  presume  the  original  argument  would  be,  "The 
chemical  explosive  produces  a  lot  of  gas,  so  there's  a  push,  or 
pressure,  from  this  gas  which  lifts  and  throws  out  material.  The 
nuclear  explosive  doesn't  do  that,  so  it  won't  be  as  effective  or  as 
efficient  in  moving  the  dirt." 

Higgins:  That  was  the  argument.  That  first  test,  the  pre- 
Plowshare  program  test,  was  not  definitive  in  that  particular,  but  the 
crater  was  about  the  right  size.  The  issue  still  was  not  settled,  but 
it  looked  as  though  the  vaporized  rock  did  the  same  amount  of  work 
as  if  it  had  been  a  permanent  gas.  That  was  important  from  a 
containment  point  of  view,  because  that  meant  the  vaporized 
material  contained  a  lot  of  the  energy.  There  was  a  good  mixing, 
at  least  until  most  of  the  energy  was  in  the  gaseous  material,  and 
there  wasn't  a  lot  of  radiant  energy  left  behind. 

So,  the  Plowshare  cratering  program  people  proposed  a  series 
of  shots,  like  Teapot  ESS,  at  a  number  of  depths  to  confirm  the 
scaling  curves,  and  to  examine  this  business  of  the  gas  coupling  at 
deeper  depths.  I  think  the  scaled  depth  of  Teapot  ESS  was  about 
60  feet.  The  optimum  scaled  depth  of  burst  for  cratering  is  about 
1 20,  and  so  Teapot  ESS  was  at  about  half  the  optimum  depth.  The 
gas  becomes  more  important  as  the  detonation  point  gets  deeper, 
and  the  argument  was  that  as  you  approached  a  scaled  depth  of  1 00 
or  120  for  a  nuclear  source  the  gas  acceleration  phase,  or  the  gas 
coupling,  wouldn't  be  very  effective.  So,  one  of  the  objectives  of 
the  early  Plowshare  cratering  program  was  to  confirm  the  scaling 
curves. 

First  we  confirmed  that  the  old  scaling  curves  that  had  been 
published  by  the  French  in  1870's  were  valid.  And  it  turns  out 
they're  very  precise,  and  they  were  valid  for  both  TNT  and  nuclear 
explosives.  When  we  used  a  thousand  calorie  per  gram  high 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


369 


explosive  like  TNT,  we  got  the  same  results  that  the  French  had. 
And  we  found  that  the  effect  of  wet  rock  or  dry  sand  was  not  all  that 
pronounced.  There  was  a  little  difference,  but  all  these  curves 
existed.  By  confirming  one  or  two  of  them  we  found  that  we  could 
use  all  of  the  curves. 

The  real  issue  was  how  far  up  in  yield  could  you  go,  because  it's 
obvious,  if  you  think  about  it,  that  in  a  gravity  field  there  is  an  upper 
limit  to  the  size  of  crater  you  can  make.  If  you  tried  to  do  half  the 
world,  it  would  obviously  all  fail  back,  because  it's  going  to  fall  back 
into  the  same  world.  It  might  be  oriented  differently,  but  there  s 
going  to  be  no  crater  at  all.  What  flies  up  one  place  will  fall  back 
somewhere  else. 

The  largest  explosion  we  did  was  the  Sedan  event  on  July  6, 
1962.  It  was  100  kilotons  or  so,  at  a  depth  of  about  630  feet.  That 
was  the  optimum  depth  from  the  old  scaling  curves.  Lo  and  behold! 
It  scaled  just  as  if  it  had  been  high  explosives.  It  produced  a  300 
foot  deep  crater  that  was  essentially  350  feet  in  radius,  and  was  very 
close,  or  exactly  on,  the  high  explosive  curves.  That  verified  the 
scaling  curves  from  I  gram  to  1 00  kilotons,  which  is  1 0  to  the  8th 
grams. 

The  point,  for  containment,  is  that  100  kilotons  at  the 
optimum  scaled  depth  of  burst  produced  the  right  scaled  dimen 
sions  for  the  crater.  We  also  looked  at  the  craters  from  the  Pacific 
surface  shots,  and  those  large  yields  at  the  surface  produced  craters 
also  of  the  right  scaled  dimensions.  The  inference  was  that  when  the 
explosive  was  contained,  and  it  produced  no  crater,  the  same  logic 
should  apply.  In  other  words,  an  explosion  should  be  completely 
contained  at  the  same  scaled  depth  of  burst,  whether  the  explosion 
was  a  gram  or  10  grams  or  100  kilotons  or  even  a  megaton. 

In  the  absence  of  gravity,  in  a  perfectly  elastic  medium,  the 
effects  of  energy  at  a  point  decreases  as  the  radius  cubed.  But  when 
you  put  gravity  in,  and  say  the  explosion  is  going  to  be  contained 
in  this  constant  force  field,  things  change.  If  you  include  gravity, 
the  containment  depth  doesn't  scale  as  the  yield  to  the  1/3. 
Empirically  it  was  found  that  it  wasn't  1/3,  but  more  like  1/3.4. 
The  scaled  containment  depth,  on  that  basis,  was  220  feet.  A 
couple  of  high  explosive  tests  were  fired  at  that  depth.  One  was  in 


370 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


basalt,  a  hard  dry  rock  that  was  thought  to  be  representative  of  a 
portion  of  the  hard  ridge  that  separates  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific,  and 
therefore  was  relevant  to  the  Panama  Canal  issue. 

The  Sulky  experiment  was  conducted  at  a  depth  which  should 
have  just  barely  produced  a  crater.  And,  it  barely  produced  a 
crater.  It  did  what  it  was  supposed  to  do,  at  a  little  less  than  a  half 
a  kiloton.  So,  it  appeared  that  the  logic  worked.  What  was  missing 
was  that  for  containment  of  high  explosives,  or  the  nuclear  explo¬ 
sive,  that  doesn't  include  any  of  the  gases.  While  there  was  no  crater 
produced,  for  the  220  scaled  depth  essentially  all  of  the  gases  went 
through  cracks  and  came  out  into  the  atmosphere.  None  of  the  solid 
material  did,  but  from  today's  containment  of  nuclear  explosives 
point  of  view  that  would  not  be  adequate.  It  would  not  adequate 
from  the  U.S.  point  of  view,  I  should  say.  There's  a  difference 
between  the  Soviet  view  and  the  U.S.  view  on  what  containment  is. 

So,  the  220  scaling  law  is  useful  only  as  saying,  "Well,  that 
limit  we  know  is  too  shallow."  It  certainly  establishes  a  lower  limit 
to  the  depth  of  burst  for  containment,  and  in  that  sense  it  probably 
is  useful.  If  you  apply  it  to  four  megatons  or  so,  as  you  would  for 
Cannikin  at  Amchitka,  that  lower  limit  turns  out  to  be  a  little  over 
a  1,000  feet,  instead  of  6,000  feet.  Well,  there's  a  great  deal  of 
difference  in  cost  between  drilling  a  hole  1 ,000  feet  deep  and  one 
6,000  feet  deep.  That  last  mile,  so  to  speak,  really  costs  you. 

Carothers:  We  were  willing  to  go  the  extra  mile. 

Higgins:  Yes,  in  spite  of  the  evidence. 

But  those  experiments  established  how  shallow  one  might  go 
and  not  release  prompt  debris.  I  don't  think  anyone  would  have 
tried  it.  But  it  does  point  out  that  as  you  go  to  larger  and  larger 
explosions,  the  price  of  complete  containment,  in  the  sense  that  we 
are  now  doing  it,  is  quite  high.  I'm  convinced,  and  I  think  others 
who  have  looked  at  it  are,  that  we  could,  if  we  were  ever  do  a 
megaton  test  again,  bury  it  half  as  deep  as  we  have  done  in  the  past, 
with  complete  safety. 

Carothers:  You've  been  an  exponent  of  that  for  some  time.  I 
have  a  comment.  As  the  yield  goes  up  to  a  megaton,  or  even  to  ten 
kilotons,  you're  burying  the  explosive  at  a  depth  where  I  doubt 
there  has  ever  been  a  large  chemical  explosion  done.  So,  you're 
extrapolating  these  curves,  and  the  implicit  presumption  is  that  the 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


371 


earth  in  which  you  are  doing  this  explosion  is  a  homogeneous  earth, 
so  what  happens  near  the  surface  is  the  same  thing  that  will  happen 
at  depth  when  there  are  layers  of  different  materials  which  have 
dips,  and  faults,  and  cracks. 

Higgins:  That  is  a  complex  issue,  and  there  isn't  a  simple 
answer.  The  criticisms  and  the  concerns  early  on  in  all  of  the 
underground  and  containment  programs  were  that  these  fissures 
and  faults  and  irregularities  and  uncertainties  in  the  earth  would 
really  dominate  the  observed  effects.  In  fact,  as  data  began  to 
accumulate,  what  was  found  was  that  the  wavelength,  or  the  size  of 
the  stress  wave,  and  the  size  of  these  irregularities  were  different. 
Things  as  small  as  faults  offsets,  and  void:,  and  changes  of  material 
properties  apparently  don't  interact  with  the  stress  wave  from  the 
explosion  because  it  is  spread  out  more  in  space  and  time  than  they 
can  involve.  The  stress  wave  Just  doesn't  see  them;  it  just  wraps 
around  the  irregularities. 

While  it  was  a  very  real  concern,  the  early  data  have  been 
confirmed  in  a  large  variety  of  cases.  Faults  and  fissures  and 
irregularities  become  important  only  in  very  special  circumstances. 
They  can  be  important,  but  they  have  to  be  supplemented  by  other 
irregularities  that  make  the  stress  wave  itself,  and  the  pressure  field, 
irregular  in  such  a  way  that  they  reinforce  each  other.  I  think 
Baneberry  is  probably  the  best  example  of  a  lot  of  such  effects 
occurring  simultaneously,  and  I  think  most  people  agree  that  kind 
of  interaction  was  involved  in  the  Baneberry  failure.  I  don't  think 
everybody  agrees  as  to  which  of  those  things  was  most  important. 

Carothers:  The  importance  of  irregularities  should  vary  de¬ 
pending  on  the  yield.  In  other  words,  if  I  am  on  the  scaling  curves, 
burying  something  at  the  proper  depth,  it  would  seem  that  if  I 
detonate  a  gram  or  so  I  might  be  greatly  influenced  by  some 
irregularities  in  the  medium.  Now,  the  earth,  like  nuclear  cross 
sections,  doesn't  scale  —  the  earth  is  just  there.  If  I  want  to  detonate 
a  gram,  or  ten  grams,  things  as  small  as  the  particle  size  of  the 
medium  might  be  very  important  to  me.  If  I  want  to  detonate  a 
megaton,  particle  size  is  probably  completely  insignificant.  Put 
another  way,  they  are  very  small  compared  to  the  wavelength  of  the 
stress  wave. 


372 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Higgins:  Exactly  right.  And  it's  one  of  the  mistakes  that  can 
occur  if  you  try  to  do  scaled  models  of  tests  at  the  one  gram  scale. 
You  have  to  be  very  careful  to  scale  all  of  the  particle  sizes,  and 
other  features,  along  with  the  size  of  the  explosive. 

When  we  have  a  nuclear  explosion  the  wavelengths  from  the 
explosion  are  in  the  hundred  meter  range,  as  far  as  the  bulk  of  the 
growth  is  concerned.  After  all,  the  cavity  grows  from  the  size  of  the 
explosion,  which  is  a  meter  or  so,  up  to  a  hundred  meters  or  so. 
Those  things  that  are  a  lot  smaller  than  a  meter,  or  a  hundred 
meters,  aren't  going  to  make  a  lot  of  difference.  If  you  had  a 
hundred  meter  sized  hole,  I  think  there's  no  doubt  that  the 
explosion  would  find  it  and  go  out.  A  one  meter  size  hole,  it's 
questionable.  A  tenth  of  a  meter  size  hole  is  so  small  that  its  not 
going  to  make  any  difference.  This  is  my  opinion,  and  I  think  it's 
been  shown  in  a  couple  of  cases.  It's  not  going  to  make  any 
difference  no  matter  what's  in  the  hole,  including  nothing.  We've 
done  tests  many  times  with  ten  centimeter  size  pipes.  We  worry 
about  them  because  we  worry  how  big  is  too  big,  but  the  evidence 
is  that  they  don't  make  a  lot  of  difference. 

Carothers:  Well,  there  are  some  people  who  might  take 
exception  to  your  statement.  You  said,  "If  you  had  a  hole  which  was 
a  tenth  of  a  meter  in  diameter,  it  doesn't  make  any  difference  what's 
in  that  hole,  including  nothing."  There  was  a  period  of  time  when 
you  chemists  drilled  holes,  not  quite  that  small,  but  still  much 
smaller  than  a  meter,  near  events,  and  filled  them  with  various 
things  at  various  times,  including  drilling  mud,  nitromethane,  and 
starch. 

Some  of  those  holes  stayed  open.  Take  Eel,  for  example. 
There  were  two  small  holes  near  the  emplacement  hole.  One  was 
filled  with  drilling  mud.  the  other  with  nitromethane.  The  mud,  the 
cables,  and  anything  else  that  was  in  them  blew  out,  and  the  cavity 
did  its  best  push  all  the  gas  out  them.  How  does  that  square  with 
your  statement  that  it  doesn't  matter  what's  in  the  hole? 

Higgins:  It  does  matter  what's  in  it.  I  made  an  imprecise,  and 
also  unconsidered  statement.  You  can  contrive  to  keep  a  tenth  of 
a  meter  hole  open,  but  it  takes  some  special  efforts.  To  keep  such 
a  size  hole  open  isn't  easy. 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


373 


Drilling 

Regardless  of  the  depth  that  is  chosen  as  the  appropriate  one 
for  a  planned  experiment,  a  hole  must  be  drilled  so  the  device  and 
the  associated  experimental  hardware  can  be  emplaced.  The  drill¬ 
ing  of  the  hole  is  not  a  containment  issue  in  itself,  but  on  more  than 
one  occasion  what  the  drillers  were  able  to  do  has  modified  the 
planned  containment  or  experiment  design.  Information  from  the 
drilling  processs,  should  it  reach  the  containment  scientist,  can 
sometimes  provide  valuable  insights  as  to  the  properties  of  the 
medium  through  which  the  hole  has  been  drilled.  The  characteris¬ 
tics  of  the  hole,  such  as  its  diameter  and  straightness  constrain  how 
the  various  data  colection  experiments  can  be  designed. 

In  1961,  when  the  moratorium  ended,  Livermore  did  their  first 
few  shots  in  tunnels,  with  little  success  as  far  as  containment  was 
concerned.  Los  Alamos  always  used  drill  holes,  and  their  experi¬ 
ence  was  somewhat  better.  One  of  the  concerns  about  the  use  of  drill 
holes  was  that  they  weren’t  big  enough  to  allow  much  in  the  way  of 
diagnostic  measurements.  During  the  first  few  years  the  holes  were 
36  inches,  or  48  inches  in  diameter.  While  large  compared  to  holes 
that  were  drilled  for  things  such  as  oil  exploration  and  production, 
they  were  a  very  small  diameter  laboratory  space  in  which  to  place 
the  diagnostic  equipment  needed  to  collect  data  about  the  perfor¬ 
mance  of  the  nuclear  device. 

Miller:  By  the  time  I  got  to  the  Test  Site  the  common  size  holes 
were  36  or  48  inches,  and  they  were  doing  them  in  one  pass.  In  the 
very  beginning  they  would  drill  a  small  hole,  similar  to  what  they 
used  to  do  in  the  oil  fields,  then  open  them  up  with  what  we  called 
a  hole  opener,  or  hole  enlarger. 

Carothers:  The  people  who  were  trying  to  make  the  measure¬ 
ments  always  wanted  a  bigger  hole  —  four,  six,  eight,  ten  feet  in 
diameter.  Who  developed  what  you  might  call  "big  hole  drilling?" 
Did  we  do  that,  or  was  that  a  commercial  development? 

Miller:  The  evolution  came  from  people  at  the  Test  Site.  The 
Laboratory  would  give  the  requirements  to  the  then  AEC,  and  they, 
of  course,  had  drilling  contractor.  Holmes  and  Narver  had  the 
drilling  before  I  came  out  to  the  Site.  When  I  came  to  work  out  there 


374 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


I  worked  as  an  engineer  for  Fenix  and  Sisson,  and  they  did  the  design 
work  for  whatever  was  required,  in  conjunction  with  REECO.  I 
think  the  answer,  probably,  depends  on  who  you  talk  to. 

I  think  that  initially  it  was  probably  entirely  the  A&E,  Fenix  and 
Sisson,  and  it  kind  of  evolved  to  more  REECO  doing  it,  mainly 
because  of  personalities.  It  would  depend  on  who  was  given  the  job. 
We  had  some  really  fantastic  people  out  there.  One  with  F&S  was 
named  Art  Flodge.  I'm  one  of  the  few  people  on  earth  who  could 
get  along  with  him,  because  I  wouldn't  take  off  him.  Fie  was  a  mean 
one,  but  he  was  smarter  then  anybody  I'd  ever  known.  Fie  was  that 
type  of  guy.  REECO  had  a  guy  by  the  name  of  Sim  Crews,  who  was 
a  petroleum  engineer.  Between  the  two  of  them,  reluctantly 
sometimes,  because  FstS  and  REECo  were  always  at  each  others 
throats,  similar  to  Los  Alamos  and  Livermore,  is  how  these  things 
developed.  The  prime  mover,  of  course,  was  the  Laboratories  — 
give  us  a  bigger  hole,  give  it  to  us  quicker  and  cheaper. 

Carothers:  Where  did  they  go  to  get  eight  foot  diameter  drill 
bits?  Nobody  in  the  world  used  them,  did  they? 

Miller:  That's  not  really  so.  The  mining  industry  used  them 
a  lot,  for  what  they  called  raise  drilling.  They  mine  in  straight,  drill 
a  hole  down,  in  a  drift,  and  then  run  a  drill  pipe  in  there.  It's  pretty 
simple  to  drill  out  a  twelve  and  a  quarter  inch  hole  in  a  drift.  Then 
they  put  a  bit  on  the  top,  and  drill  up,  and  all  the  cuttings  fall  out 
into  the  drift.  That  is  called  raise  drilling.  Then  they  haul  the 
cuttings  out  like  they  would  in  a  regular  mining  operation.  When 
you  start  at  the  surface  you  have  to  remove  the  surface  stuff  that  you 
drill  through,  and  that's  the  really  difficult  part.  Raise  drilling  is  just 
one  thing  they  use  big  bits  for. 

Carothers:  What  people  have  said  is,  "Well,  it  was  really  at  the 
Test  Site  where  we  developed  big  hole  drilling.  That  had  not  been 
done  before." 

Miller:  That's  not  so.  There  was  a  guy  with  Robin  Bits,  which 
sells  cutters.  Fantastic  guy,  an  engineer.  I  heard  him  give  a  talk,  and 
he  quoted  four  different  localities  where  they  have  drilled  big  holes, 
and  how  they  progressed  differently.  There  was  the  way  we  did  it, 
there  was  a  guy  from  Canada  who  drilled  some  big  holes,  and  there 
was  a  guy  in  Wyoming,  and  somebody  in  Tennessee  who  did 
something  with  coal  mines. 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


375 


Carothers:  Was  this  so  they  wouldn't  have  to  mine  a  shaft? 

Miller:  That's  what  they  were  for.  It  was  cheaper  to  drill  than 
it  was  to  mine  a  shaft  with  people.  Everybody  thinks  that  big  holes 
were  only  for  shooting  nuclear  bombs  in,  but  in  Chicago,  for 
instance,  they  have  a  sewer  system  under  the  city,  and  they  drilled 
big  holes  down  into  places  to  put  machinery  and  pumps  down.  In 
fact,  this  guy  with  Robin,  a  lot  of  his  experience  came  from  the 
Chicago  area.  And,  of  course,  most  of  the  other  experience  has 
come  from  the  mining  industry. 

So,  it  wasn't  all  that  hard  to  get  the  tools  if  somebody  wanted 
to  go  to  a  six  foot  hole  instead  of  a  four,  or  an  eight  instead  of  six. 
There  were  people  in  the  business,  and  there  was  always  somebody 
who  wanted  to  make  some  money,  of  course.  We  didn't  go  from 
four  foot  to  eight  foot.  It  wasn't  that  drastic  a  jump.  It  went  from 
normal  size  drilling  in  the  oil  fields  —  for  instance,  the  biggest  hole 
I  was  ever  on  before  I  came  out  to  the  Test  Site  was  a  20  inch  hole. 
Then  here  we  went  to  36  inch.  Of  course,  you  drill  a  48  inch  hole, 
and  you  put  a  36  inch  ID  casing  in.  Then  it  went  from  a  48  to  a  64, 
to  a  72,  to  an  86,  to  a  96.  It  just  went  a  little  at  a  time. 

The  biggest  bit  at  the  Test  Site  was  for  a  1  42  inch  hole  we 
drilled,  but  we  didn't  drill  that  one  on  the  Test  Site.  We  bought  the 
two  bits  for  one  of  our  programs,  and  the  only  time  they  were  used 
was  on  the  oil  shale  deal  up  at  Piceance  Creek,  which  was  done  by 
a  private  contractor.  The  waste  disposal  project  down  in  Carlsbad 
used  a  1  40  inch  bit  body  that  they  extended  out  to  1  42  inch,  which 
is  pretty  simple  to  do.  You  just  make  the  outside  cutters,  the  gate 
cutters,  about  an  inch  bigger  on  a  radius,  so  you  have  a  1 42  inch 
gauge  hole.  Those  were  two  holes.  Livermore  never  did  drill  a  140 
inch  hole  at  the  Site. 

I  believe  LASL  drilled  about  a  1  44  inch  hole  to  300  feet  for 
some  experiment  about  the  time  I  came  out  here.  But  it  was  not  a 
common  size  hole.  Of  course,  we  had  the  underreamers  for  a  while, 
too. 

Carothers:  My  recollection  is  that  we  never  had  a  lot  of  luck 
with  underreamers. 

Miller:  Oh,  we  did.  It  was  difficult  to  do,  but  we  did  several 
underreamed  holes.  I  think  probably  about  the  last  one  we  did  was 
an  underream  up  in  Area  2,  and  that  reamer  is  still  there.  They 
never  did  get  it  out  of  the  hole. 


376 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  I  remember  that.  Fred  Beane  was  the  Test 
Director.  He  came  and  said  that  this  thing  was  like  an  umbrella  — 
you  put  it  down  when  it  is  folded  up,  then  it  would  open  up.  Then 
you'd  turn  it,  and  it  would  make  a  big  hole  down  there.  So,  one  day 
he  came  in  to  see  me,  and  said,  "We  can't  get  it  closed.  Must  be 
a  rock  in  it,  or  something.  Can't  get  it  out  of  the  hole"  What  really 
happened? 

Miller:  Well,  itstarted  off  in  a  hole  in  Area  2.  The  requirement 
was  for  40  feet  of  1  44  inch  diameter  hole  at  the  bottom.  So,  we 
drilled  a  nice  60  inch  hole  and  set  a  complete  string  of  48  inch 
casing.  We  put  that  in,  and  ran  the  underreamer  in.  It  ended  up 
that  there  was  a  square  hole  at  the  bottom. 

What  happened  was  that  40  feet  a  is  pretty  long  section  to 
underream,  and  the  underreamer  got  to  oscillating.  When  it  did,  the 
arms,  because  it  was  pneumatic  pressure  that  held  them  open, 
started  doing  their  deal  as  they  rotated,  and  it  just  amplified  it  as 
they  went  down.  Each  cut  it  made,  it  spiralled.  I  didn't  know  how 
I  was  going  to  explain  that  hole  to  people. 

Those  underreamers  were  very  expensive.  It  took  a  big  piston 
and  a  lot  of  air  pressure  to  force  those  arms  open,  and  we  were  using 
the  drill  pipe  as  a  conduit  to  pressure  those  arms.  We  would  drill 
the  hole,  and  enough  extra  hole,  which  we  called  a  rat  hole,  so  the 
cuttings  would  just  fall  in  there.  We'd  let  them  fall.  If  there  got  to 
be  too  many,  we'd  pull  the  underreamer  out,  go  back  in,  and  clean 
out  the  rat  hole. 

The  one  we  lost  was  not  because  of  a  rock.  I  didn't  know  it  until 
after  we  shot  it  off,  but  the  guy  who  built  it,  another  one  of  those 
exceptional  engineers,  who  worked  for  an  outfit  in  LA,  and  did  a  lot 
of  things  for  us  told  me  that  the  specs  originally  called  for  T- 1  steel 
on  the  arms.  Somebody  in  DOE  saw  the  cost  of  it,  and  changed  it 
to  some  other  kind  of  steel  that  wasn't  as  strong.  This  was  an 
underreamer  with  sixteen  foot  arms,  and  when  those  arms  opened, 
they  bent.  If  it  had  been  stronger  steel  it  would  probably  have  been 
all  right.  The  arms  folded  up  into  a  grove,  but  they  bent  a  little  bit. 
So,  they  wouldn't  go  back  into  the  grooves,  and  that  is  what 
happened. 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling  377 

Carothers:  I  remember  Fred  Beane  coming  in  and  saying, 
"Can't  get  the  underreamer  out.  Can't  get  it  closed.  Schedule,  and 
all  this,  and  all  that."  And  I  remember  saying,  "Well,  shoot  it  off." 

Miller:  One  of  the  hardest  things  I  ever  had  to  do  was  shoot 
that  off,  but  I  shot  it  off.  That  was  a  half  a  million  dollar  tool.  That 
was  terrible.  I've  made  a  lot  of  hairy  decisions,  but  I'm  the  one  who 
called  Fred  Beane,  and  then  he  probably  called  you.  I  said,  "We're 
not  going  to  get  this  thing  out  of  here.  You  might  as  well  make  your 
head  up  to  that.  He  said,  "Well,  what  are  you  going  to  do?"  I  said, 
"There's  only  two  things  to  do,  and  that's  abandon  the  hole,  or, 
shoot  the  damn  thing  off."  And  it  was  cheaper  to  shoot  it  off  than 
to  lose  the  hole. 

Carothers:  Well,  the  cost  of  what's  done  for  containment  is 
something  people  in  containment  get  hassled  about  every  now  and 
then  —  all  those  cable  gas  blocks,  all  those  logs  that  you  have  to  run 
in  the  hole,  all  this,  all  that.  Then  people  eventually  come  to  their 
senses,  and  say,  "Well,  compared  to  the  cost  of  the  hole,  all  those 
things  don't  cost  very  much."  If  you  say,  "I've  got  to  have  the 
hole,"  then  adding  the  cost  of  the  rest  of  this  stuff  is  no  big  deal. 

Miller:  The  fact  is  that  all  the  things  we  did  in  the  holes  for 
containment  didn't  amount  to  all  that  much  cost. 

Of  course,  the  straight  and  plumb  hole  requirement  was  really 
a  challenge  for  us,  but  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  containment;  that 
had  to  do  with  diagnostics. 

Carothers:  Yes.  Once  upon  a  time  we  wanted  to  do  some 
measurements  where  the  emplacement  pipe  was  to  be  straight,  and 
just  hang  down  in  the  hole  like  a  plumbbob.  So,  we  said  we  wanted 
a  straight  hole,  and  you  gave  us  a  straight  hole.  You  said,  "That  hole 
is  so  straight  you  can  look  from  the  top  down  to  the  bottom,  and 
you'll  find  that  the  bottom  is  only  off  about  two  inches  from  the 
top."  We  said,  "Yeah,  but  our  pipe  won't  hang  in  that  hole,  because 
it's  slanted."  And  then  somebody,  probably  you,  said,  "Oh,  you 
want  a  plumb  hole.  Why  didn't  you  say  so.  You  just  said  straight." 

Miller:  Yeah.  I  remember  that  hole.  It  was  U2v.  In  fact,  I 
was  working  for  Fenix  and  Sisson  when  that  requirement  came  for 
that  first  straight  hole.  You  said  straight,  and  assumed  plumb. 

Carothers:  Well,  of  course. 


378 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Miller:  We  drilled  a  twenty-two  hundred  foot  hole  that  had  a 
seven  foot  displacement  at  the  bottom,  and  it  was  a  line-of-sight. 
So,  "What's  your  problem?"  "Well,  we  meant  straight  down."  I 
said,  "Well,  that's  a  different  story."  Anyway,  we  got  so  we  could 
do  that. 

Another  thing  that  happened  with  drilling,  and  it  happened  on 
that  event  that  leaked  -  -  Riola.  We  drilled  into  that  thing  to  take 
pictures  of  the  old  emplacement  hole,  and  missed  it  the  first  time. 
And  that  brought  up  something  people  ought  to  know,  and  we  know 
it  at  the  Test  Site  now. 

Carothers:  It  was  only  a  couple  of  hundred  feet  down. 

Miller:  It  was  more  than  that,  but  you're  right,  it  wasn't  very 
far  down.  Anyway,  we  missed  this  eight  foot  target  down  there.  We 
did  everything  we  could  think  of  to  do  it  right.  Here  was  everybody 
out  there,  including  the  containment  people  who  wanted  to  take  a 
picture  of  what  was  down  there,  and  we  missed  it. 

Then  I  did  something  that  I  very  seldom  ever  did.  I'd  been  up 
damn  near  four  days  straight,  and  1  said,  "To  hell  with  it."  The 
whipstocker,  the  directional  drilling  engineer  -  -  Robert  Thompson 
had  the  contract  out  there  -  -  said,  "We  hit  it."  I  said,  "You  couldn't 
have.  It's  an  empty  hole."  He  said,  "Well,  you've  got  to  believe 
your  figures."  I  said,  "Not  if  they're  wrong."  Anyway,  he  got  mad. 
He'd  been  up  a  long  time  too.  We  had  a  little  screaming  match,  and 
I  told  the  driller  to  pick  up. 

Then  I  said,  "I  want  to  set  that  Dyna  Drill  at  1 60  degrees  left, 
and  we're  going  to  drill  until  we  hit  that  thing."  So,  the  directional 
drilling  engineer  got  mad  and  said,  "To  hell  with  you.  I'm  leaving." 

I  said,  "Bye."  Anyway,  I  picked  it  up  and  started  drilling.  I  could 
do  the  directional  drilling  work  myself. 

The  partner  of  the  guy  who  got  mad  at  me  came  out  and  said, 
"What  are  you  doing?"  I  told  him  what  I  was  doing.  He  said,  "You 
tell  me  exactly  what  you  want  to  do,  and  I'll  do  it  foryou.  You  don't 
have  to  do  it.  You're  paying  me  to  do  it."  I  said,  "Fine."  So  I  picked 
up  and  he  drilled  it,  and  I  was  sitting  there  looking  at  that  weight 
indicator.  The  whipstocker  was  in  telling  a  guy  in  the  doghouse, 
"We'll  be  here  until  Christmas,  and  we  won't  get  that  thing."  It 
wasn't  thirty  seconds  later  it  fell  in.  Hit  it  dead  center.  I  thought 
I  was  basing  this  on  knowledge,  but  it  was  just  pure  unadulterated 
luck.  Well,  you've  got  to  depend  on  something,  sometimes. 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


379 


What  people  should  remember  is  that  the  reason  we  missed  it 
was  because  we  were  using  the  magnetic  declination  of  sixteen 
degrees.  We'd  been  using  that  for  a  long  time,  and  we  had  known 
we  had  missed  some  targets  before.  But,  we  never  had  the  type  of 
surveying  we  had  on  this  one.  Usually  it  wasn't  ail  that  accurate. 
Anyway,  we  got  to  checking  back,  and  I  called  H&N  that  night  and 
said,  "What  is  the  declination  we  should  be  using?"  "Sixteen 
degrees."  And  I  said,  "Yeah."  Well,  you  go  back  to  when  the  NTS 
first  started,  and  ail  the  charts  out  there,  all  the  quads,  say  sixteen 
degrees  east  declination,  but  in  real  fine  print  it  says,  "Varying 
easterly  three  minutes  per  year." 

If  you  stop  and  figure  it  out,  over  those  years  it  had  changed 
a  degree  and  a  half,  and  everybody  was  still  using  sixteen  degrees. 
Three  minutes  a  year  is  nothing.  But  over  twenty  years,  you  ended 
up  with  a  degree.  Anyway,  based  on  that  we  started  taking  a 
magnetic  declination  at  each  location.  And  it  actually  varied  a  little 
bit  across  the  Test  Site.  That  shows  how  you  can  get  in  a  rut. 

Carothers:  When  you  first  came  to  the  Site  both  Livermore  and 
Los  Alamos  were  using  holes  that  were  cased  all  the  way  down.  How 
do  you  do  that? 

Miller:  Well,  this  is  similar  to  the  oil  fields.  The  only  difference 
is  that  in  the  oil  fields  the  pipes  screw  together,  just  like  the  pipe  you 
use  to  emplace  the  device.  Same  kind  of  pipe.  It  screws  together, 
and  it  goes  pretty  fast.  When  you  get  to  the  bigger  diameters,  you 
have  to  weld  each  section  together.  Those  sections  are  30  to  40 
feet  long.  The  string  is  supported  by  a  strongback,  and  the  next  joint 
is  picked  up  by  what  we  call  elevators,  and  put  in  and  welded.  Then 
you  pick  the  whole  thing  up  and  lower  it  down  so  you  can  put  on 
the  next  joint,  and  so  on  until  you  finally  get  to  the  bottom.  It  took 
a  lot  of  time,  and  my  time,  which  I  was  paid  for,  but  I  thought  it  was 
ridiculous. 

Now,  when  you  get  to  holes  that  go  below  the  water  table  you 
have  to  do  that  if  you  want  a  dry  hole.  You  do  the  same  thing  of 
welding  a  string  of  casing  together.  Of  course,  the  bottom  piece  has 
a  plate  welded  across  the  bottom,  and  so  as  the  string  goes  down  the 
water  supports  it  to  some  extent.  Actually,  you  put  water  in  it  to 
get  it  down,  but  after  it's  cemented  in  you  bail  that  out. 


380 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  After  a  few  years  somebody  at  Livermore  said,  "We 
don't  need  to  case  them."  How  did  you  feel  about  that?  Did  you 
think  that  made  any  sense? 

Miller:  I  can  remember  when  that  happened,  and  I  thought 
that  was  great.  I  thought  we  wasted  so  much  money  out  there  it  was 
sickening  to  me.  And  I  still  believe  that.  Not  casing  the  holes  saved 
the  Test  Program  so  much  money. 

Carothers:  Many  millions.  But  the  argument  always  was  that 
you  had  to  case  them,  because  otherwise  you  might  be  lowering  a 
device  downhole,  and  the  sides  of  the  hole  might  slough  in,  or 
something  like  that.  Did  you  believe  that? 

Miller:  Oh  yeah. 

Carothers:  Well,  then  why  in  the  world  did  you  think  we  should 
not  case  them? 

Miller:  Well,  as  I  remember  it,  there  was  a  lot  of  discussion  that 
went  on  about  it.  I  didn't  really  think  cave-ins  were  going  to 
happen,  because  we  could  repair  the  hole  when  we  were  drillling  it, 
and  we  did.  A  bunch  of  them  caved  in  ahead  of  time,  and  we 
repaired  them.  The  ones  that  were  really  bad  we  cased.  But,  holes 
do  slough.  Fortunately,  one  never  has  yet  with  the  device  in  there. 
But  i'll  tell  you,  being  out  there  on  a  downhole  and  hearing  rocks 
falling  in  is  a  little  discouraging.  It  happened  all  the  time. 

Carothers:  How  did  people  get  up  the  nerve  to  try  it? 

Miller:  I  don't  know  who  originally  did,  but  I  think  it  was  not 
people,  but  a  person  —  Charley  Williams.  He'd  just  become  Test 
Director.  I  was  still  working  for  Fenix  and  Sisson,  and  Walt  ]ohnson 
called  me  up  and  said,  "How  about  an  uncased  hole?  Do  you  think 
it'll  stay  open?"  I  said,  "It  depends  on  where  you  put  it."  I  was  all 
for  it.  Casing  was  a  time  consuming  experience. 

I'm  not  sure  whether  the  first  one  was  lOd  or  lOw.  In  fact, 

I  think  the  first  uncased  hole,  and  the  hole  with  the  first  device  put 
down  on  a  pipe,  was  the  same  hole,  on  the  Test  Site.  I  think  that 
at  Hattiesburg  they  might  have  emplaced  the  device  with  a  drilling 
rig,  and  Rex  was  another  one  they  did. 

Carothers:  Well,  uncased  holes  have  been  used  successfully 
many,  many  times. 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


381 


Miller:  Yes.  But  a  lot  of  those  holes  sloughed  afield  of  time, 
and  we'd  repair  them  by  cementing  up  the  sloughing  zone  and 
drilling  back.  You  would  never  have  used  them  without  doing  that 

Carothers:  It  was  a  long  time  before  Los  Alamos  started  to  use 
uncased  holes. 

Miller:  Oh  yes.  They  were  dead  set  against  it,  and  I  never 
understood  it,  especially  on  Pahute  Mesa  where  you  have  essentially 
competent  ground.  There  are  very  few  caving  zones  on  Pahute 
Mesa.  Some,  but  not  like  Yucca  Flats. 

Scolman:  Our  going  to  uncased  holes  was  largely  based  on 
Livermore's  success  in  shooting  in  uncased  holes.  It  saved  a  lot  of 
money,  but  our  field  engineering  group  was  dragged  into  that 
particular  regime  kicking  and  screaming.  For  a  long  time  the 
argument  was,  "Well,  Area  3  alluvium  is  not  like  Area  9  or  Area  2 
alluvium." 

Carothers:  "It's  loose,  it's  unconsolidated,  and  it's  goingto  fall 

in." 

Scolman:  Yes,  and  there's  something  to  be  said  for  that.  It  is 
indeed  different.  But  it  turns  out  that  yes,  you  can  drill  it,  and  the 
hole  will  stand.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  will  look  at  many  of  the 
so-called  Los  Alamos  uncased  holes,  they're  uncased  for  a  pretty 
small  fraction  of  their  total  depth.  We  tend  to  run  an  intermediate 
casing,  as  we  call  it,  in  many  cases  through  the  alluvial  layer,  all  the 
way,  and  then  we  case  when  we  get  below  the  water  table.  So  there's 
a  relatively  short  section  that  is  uncased. 

Carothers:  Certainly  holes  do  slough.  A  hole  is  drilled  to  some 
total  depth,  and  when  checked  sometime  later  it's  ten  or  twenty 
meters  shallower.  I  don't  think  anybody  knows  whether  that 
material  fell  in  pebble  by  pebble  or  as  a  hunk  of  stuff.  That  would 
make  a  difference  if  you  were  half  way  downhole  when  it  decided 
to  slough. 

Scolman:  Test  Directors  worry  about  such  things.  You're 
probably  aware  of  one  that  we  had  slough  immediately  after  drilling, 
which  came  all  the  way  to  the  surface.  Luckily,  it  did  not  go  up  the 
hole,  and  so  the  surface  depression  was  actually  to  one  side  of  the 
drill  rig.  It  did  slough  all  the  way  to  the  surface.  It  was  in  Area  4, 
and  it  was  within  the  last  five  years. 


382 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Miller:  There  were  two  of  them  that  did  that.  The  first  one 
was  an  uncased  hole  that  was  drilled  to  like  a  thousand  feet.  They 
were  getting  ready  to  use  it,  and  went  over  there,  and  there's  a 
doggone  collapse  crater.  There's  the  emplacement  hole,  and  right 
next  to  it  is  the  collapsed  area.  The  thing  caved  in,  ail  the  way  to 
the  surface. 

The  one  they  don't  like  to  talk  about  is  the  one  that  occurred 
with  the  drilling  rig  on  it.  Everybody  tried  to  keep  that  quiet, 
because  if  certain  safety  people  heard  about  it,  who  knows  what  they 
would  have  done.  What  happened  was  it  collapsed  underneath  the 
rig,  under  part  of  the  sub-base,  while  they  were  drilling.  They 
hauled  trucks  in  there  with  gravel;  several  truckloads;  I  never  did 
find  out  how  many.  They  filled  it  back  up,  and  gently  moved  the 
rig  off,  and  abandoned  the  hole. 

The  result  of  that  was  a  meeting  just  between  the  drillers;  there 
wasn't  anybody  else  involved  in  it.  I  was  in  some  of  the  meetings. 
What  can  we  do  about  it?  And  I  won't  mention  any  names,  but  one 
LASL  guy  said  that  they  were  thinking  about  putting  an  expanded 
metal  mat  all  over  the  location,  so  if  it  happened  again  the 
roughnecks  wouldn't  fall  in  it. 

Then  Fred  Huckabee,  who  is  an  old  driller  -  -  he  used  to  be  a 
tooI,-pusher  on  one  of  our  post-shot  rigs  -  -  he  looked  at  me,  and  sort 
of  made  a  face,  and  he  said,  "I'll  tel!  you  what.  I  used  to  roughneck, 
Miller  used  to  roughneck,  and  I  think  he  feels  the  same  way.  If  my 
driller  brought  me  out  to  a  rig  and  it  had  this  expanded  metal  all  over 
everything  I'd  have  to  ask  him  what  it  was  for.  And  he'd  tell  me, 
'In  case  the  ground  opens  up,  that's  to  keep  you  from  falling  in  it.'" 
He  says,  "I  wouldn't  have  worked  another  minute  for  that  driller. 

I  would  have  left."  And  Huckabee  really  got  mad.  He  was  serious, 
and  he  said,  "We  don't  want  to  start  any  crap  like  that,  because  that 
tells  you  that  it's  unsafe  to  do  what  you're  doing.  You're  putting 
a  safety  net  like  for  somebody  from  the  Circus  Circus  -  -  in  case  he 
misses  his  grip  he's  going  to  fall  in  the  safety  net.  You  don't  want 
to  do  that  with  a  drilling  rig." 

So  there  were  two  events  where  that  happened  in  the  LASL 
area,  and  after  those  things  happened,  if  they  had  an  emplacement 
hole,  and  had  a  shot  nearby,  they  would  fill  the  thing  all  the  way 
back  up  with  stemming  material.  Shoot  the  shot,  and  go  back  and 
de-stem  the  hole.  Suck  the  stuff  out.  Like  re-drilling  it,  essentially. 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


383 


Carothers:  Didn't  they  do  it  with  something  like  a  big  vacuum 
cleaner? 

Miller:  Yeah,  but  it  takes  a  drilling  rig.  it  was  a  design  by  this 
guy  Art  Hodge,  for  the  Snubber  event  LASL  had,  where  they  were 
going  to  de-stem  this  sand  stemming  in  the  shaft  and  reenter  it.  We 
used  it  in  Area  7  during  the  accelerated  program  when  the 
stemming  slumped  and  tore  the  cables  loose.  We  went  out  there  and 
worked  all  night,  and  used  the  same  string  to  de-stem  it  so  they 
could  get  down  to  repair  the  cables.  So,  that's  the  reason  LASL  did 
that.  They  didn't  want  to  lose  any  more  holes.  They  figured  the 
one  that  occurred  without  the  drilling  rig  on  it  was  caused  by  a 
nearby  shot. 

Carothers:  This  doesn't  have  to  do  with  drilling,  but  I'll  bet 
you  were  involved  in  it.  There  were  a  couple  of  occasions  where  we 
had  cable  breaks  downhole,  and  we  built  cages  and  put  people 
downhole  to  fix  them.  Do  you  recall  those? 

Miller:  Oh  yeah.  I  guess  about  the  worst  one  was  Jorum.  It 
was  uncased,  but  they  didn't  have  to  put  people  down  on  that  one. 
On  Jorum,  all  the  device  and  diagnostics  was  in  like  a  submarine, 
because  the  shot  was  in  an  uncased  hole  below  the  water  table.  The 
stemming  material  from  the  device  up  to  the  top  of  the  water  was 
these  real  beautiful,  round  beach  pebbles  -  -  rounded  so  they 
wouldn't  abrade  the  cables.  But,  they  tore  the  cables  loose,  and 
broke  the  tape  and  the  kellum  grips  anyway.  They  saw  that  with  the 
TV.  That  was  the  first  time  I  learned  what  a  tremmi  pipe  was.  We 
ran  a  string  of  pipe  in,  to  the  water  table,  and  did  the  rest  of  the 
stemming  into  the  water  through  that  pipe. 

I  went  down  one  hole,  on  Flax.  Tubing  fell  in  on  that  one,  and 
it  was  an  uncased  hole.  They  had  pre-run  it  to  put  in  some  CTE 
plugs.  The  stemming  loads  pulled  one  of  the  strings  of  tubing  out 
of  the  bracket,  and  it  made  a  God-awful  mess  down  there.  The  top 
of  that  fish  was  about  eight  feet  below  the  conductor  pipe,  and  it  was 
parted  in  two  more  places  down  below.  We  designed  a  fishing  tool 
to  go  in  and  grab  the  fish  that  was  across  the  hole,  and  an  arm  that 
would  go  out  and  grab  the  other  one. 

For  the  top  one  they  sent  Joe  Dehart  and  I  down.  All  I  had  to 
do  was  to  latch  these  elevators  on  to  the  pipe,  and  it  was  sticking 
straight  up,  but  it  took  three  days  to  write  the  safety  notes  to  send 
us  down  there.  On  the  safety  note  it  said,  "Under  no  circumstances 


384 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


will  people  be  lowered  below  the  conductor  pipe."  I  read  that  and 
said,  "Can't  do  it.  The  top  of  the  fish  is  eight  foot  below  the 
conductor  pipe."  "Well,  we  know  that,  but  we  won't  get  this 
approved  unless  we  say  that."  When  I  said,  "Well,  I  don't 
understand,"  they  said,  "Well,  that's  just  to  satisfy  all  the  safety 
people,  and  the  powers  that  be."  Everybody  involved  in  it  knew  we 
had  to  do  it. 

So,  we  went  down  below  the  surface  conductor,  and  I  latched 
onto  that  fish.  We  had  sound  powered  phones  to  the  surface,  and 
Joe  Dehart,  who  was  a  big  ironworker  superintendent,  said,  "Hold 
on  there.  Take  off  those  phones."  So  we  took  the  phones  off.  He 
said,  "You  see  down  there?"  And  1  said,  "Yeah,  it's  about  sixteen 
hundred  feet  to  the  stemming."  He  said,  "It  took  three  days  to  write 
this  damn  safety  order."  I  said,  "So?  What  about  it?"  He  said,  "I'll 
send  one  of  my  ironworkers  up  in  a  bosuns  chair  on  the  jib  of  a  4600 
crane  a  hundred  feet,  and  I  don't  have  to  have  a  safety  order.  If  he 
falls  out  of  it  and  hits  the  ground,  what's  going  to  happen  to  him?" 
I  said,  "He  dies,  probably."  And  he  said,  "What  happens  to  us  if 
we  fall  out  of  here  and  fall  sixteen  hundred  feet?"  I  said,  "We  die." 
He  said,  "What's  the  difference?"  I  said,  "That's  easy,  Joe.  They 
can  produce  your  ironworker's  body.  It's  going  to  be  difficult  to  get 
our  bodies.  That's  the  only  difference.  The  only  difference."  He 
said,  "Put  your  phones  on.  Let's  go  up." 

Carothers:  As  I  remember,  there  was  a  man  who  fell  into  one 
of  the  holes  up  on  Pahute,  all  the  way. 

Miller:  Only  to  the  water  table. 

Carothers:  Well,  that's  a  pretty  high  dive. 

Miller:  That's  the  only  person  I've  ever  known  to  fall  into  an 
emplacement  hole.  A  laborer  fell  into  a  rat  hole  where  we  had  put 
part  of  the  drilling  gear  in,  and  it  got  stuck.  They  just  lowered  a  rope 
and  pulled  him  out.  I  think  he  was  down  about  twenty  feet.  Scared 
the  dickens  out  of  him. 


Carothers:  People  have  said,  "Well,  we'd  never  do  Baneberry 
again.  We  won't  do  that.  The  drilling  history  all  by  itself  would  alert 
us."  I  remember  that  there  was  lot  of  work  and  cementing  and 
drilling  and  trying  to  get  that  hole  down  to  depth.  Could  you  tell 
me  what  went  on  there? 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


385 


Miller:  That  was  U8d.  Well,  up  there  in  that  area  there  is  a 
clay  zone,  apparently.  The  geologists  tell  me  that  when  water, 
which  is  the  fluid  we  use,  wets  it,  it  starts  caving  in.  For  a  month 
or  so  -  -  maybe  not  that  long,  but  it  seemed  like  a  long  time  -  -  we 
would  drill  a  little  bit,  and  it  would  fall  in.  And  we'd  go  and  put  a 
cement  plug  in,  the  worst  way  you  could  put  a  cement  plug.  You'd 
like  the  hole  to  cave  in  cleanly,  and  then  go  and  cement  through  the 
zone  from  the  bottom  up.  You  can  get  an  excellent  job  that  way. 
But  when  you  can't  get  it  cleaned  out,  you  have  to  get  a  little  bit 
going  from  the  top  down,  and  1  don't  know  how  many  times  we  did 
it,  but  several  times.  What  they  finally  did  was,  I  think,  they  raised 
the  working  point  on  account  of  our  difficulty  in  drilling. 

Carothers:  We  raised  it  forty  feet.  I'm  the  one  who  did  that. 
My  Test  Director,  Fred  Beane,  would  come  in  and  say,  "Well,  they 
had  another  collapse.  But,  they  cemented  it  up,  and  they're  going 
to  drill  it  out."  The  next  day  it  was,  "Well,  it  fell  in  again."  And 
it  went  on  and  on.  Finally  I  said,  "Fred,  how  deep  is  that  hole  now?" 
Fie  said  however  deep  it  was,  and  I  said,  "You  know,  that's  deep 
enough.  That  meets  the  overburden  criterion.  It's  not  what  we  said 
we  wanted,  but  it's  good  enough.  If  you  quit  messing  around  with 
that  hole,  do  you  think  we  could  use  it?"  He  said,  "Well,  I  think  so." 
So  I  sent  out  a  TWX,  and  we  took  out  just  one  joint  of  pipe.  That's 
where  the  forty  feet  came  from.  I've  always  wondered  if  we'd  had 
that  extra  forty  feet  if  it  would  have  held  just  a  little  bit  longer,  and 
maybe  it  wouldn't  have  come  out.  I  don't  know. 

Miller:  Let  me  tell  you  something  else  that  happened  there  that 
I  never  will  forget.  During  that  process  I  used  to  go  to  Livermore 
every  Monday  morning;  they  had  regular  Monday  meetings  during 
that  time.  After  the  decision  was  made  to  raise  the  working  point 
I  was  in  Fred  Beane's  office.  After  I'd  leave  that  meeting  I'd  go  to 
his  office,  because  I  really  worked  for  him,  in  a  way.  Ralph  Chase 
and  Fred  Beane  and  I  were  sitting  there,  just  talking,  and  Billy 
Hudson  and  Cliff  Olsen  came  in  there,  and  they  were  really  upset 
about  raising  the  working  point.  They  said,  "We're  going  to 
recommend  against  it,  and  we're  going  to  put  it  in  writing."  Fred 
came  about  half  out  of  his  chair,  and  he  said,  "You  go  ahead,  and 
I'll  say  'NO'  in  writing."  They  turned  red  and  walked  down  the  hall. 
When  Baneberry  went  up  in  the  sky  I  kept  thinking  about  that. 


386 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


The  fact  is  i  recommended  we  abandon  that  hole  sometime 
before  all  that.  Not  on  account  of  I  was  afraid  it  was  going  to  vent, 
but  because  of  the  drilling  problems.  It  was  costing  a  hell  of  a  lot 
of  money.  It  was  terrible. 

Carothers:  Raising  the  working  point  wasn't  one  of  the 
smartest  thing  I  ever  did,  probably.  But  1  was  the  AD  for  Test  then, 
and  somebody  had  to  say  what  to  do. 

Miller:  Well,  it's  your  fault  then,  whatever  you  do. 

Carothers:  Yeah,  that's  right. 

Miller:  Well,  it  was  my  fault  too,  because  1  couldn't  drill  it 
deep  enough.  We  could  have  got  it  deeper,  but  we  wouldn't  have 
got  it  shot  before  Christmas.  A  lot  of  the  times  that  seemed  like  the 
controlling  factor;  it  was  getting  to  be  too  close  to  Christmas. 

Carothers:  We  didn't  want  to  have  people  down  there  over 
that  time.  They  want  to  come  home  too. 

Miller:  Well,  there  were  a  lot  of  shots  over  the  years  that  had 
happened  the  week  before  Christmas,  and  people  forget  that  the 
post-shot  drillers  always  worked  through  Christmas.  Nobody  ever 
thought  about  that. 

Carothers:  That's  true.  Was  post-shot  drilling  your  bailiwick 

too? 

Miller:  Yes. 

Carothers:  Now,  in  the  early  days  we'd  shoot  the  shot,  and  it 
would  collapse,  usually.  If  it  did  they'd  bulldoze  a  road  down  into 
the  crater,  move  a  rig  down  to  the  bottom  of  the  crater,  and  they'd 
drill  straight  down. 

Miller:  That  was  pre-Cambrian  time.  That  was  before  me.  I 
wouldn't  have  liked  that. 

Carothers:  What's  wrong  with  that? 

Miller:  Well,  the  worst  drilling  conditions  a  drilling  engineer 
can  dream  up  in  his  wildest  nightmares  exists  down  in  a  chimney. 
When  you  go  back  in  from  outside  of  the  chimney,  most  of  your 
drilling  is  essentially  in  undisturbed  ground.  You  don't  get  to  the 
chimney  until  you  get  to  the  chimney  edge.  And  normally, 
fortunately,  most  times  you  have  enough  overburden  pressure  to 
help  you  pack  the  ground  so  it  doesn't  slough  in.  Not  always,  but 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


387 


most  of  the  time,  you  have  very  little  trouble.  But  if  you  start  at  the 
top  of  the  chimney  and  drill  through  the  chimney  all  the  way  down, 
it's  just  horrible  conditions.  Back  in  those  days  I  would  not  have 
done  it.  I  would  have  quit.  They  didn't  even  use  blowout 
preventers. 

Carothers:  What  do  you  need  those  for? 

Miller:  Well,  if  you  like  to  breath  radioactive  gas,  I  guess  no 
reason.  I've  reviewed  lots  of  histories  of  when  they  did  things  like 
that,  and  there  were  all  kinds  of  problems.  To  investigate  a  chimney 
for  a  containment  scientist  would  be  no  problem,  because  we'd 
probably  do  it  six  months  or  a  year  after  the  event.  But  doing  post¬ 
shot  drilling  rapidly  to  get  fast-time  samples  for  the  radiochemist  is 
a  different  thing.  I'm  not  talking  about  the  drilling.  The  drilling 
problems  are  going  to  remain.  I'm  talking  about  the  radiological 
problems. 

Carothers:  One  of  the  things  that  interests  people  in  the 
containment  world  is,  what  is  the  condition  of  the  rocks  in  the 
chimney.  They  don't  think  about  it  in  terms  of  drilling;  they  think 
about  it  in  terms  of  shooting  another  shot  pretty  close  by.  You  said 
that  if  you  start  to  drill  down  from  the  top,  you've  got  probably  a 
lot  of  loose,  broken  rock.  You  lose  circulation.  I  can  understand 
that  at  the  very  top  of  the  chimney,  but  as  you  get  down  a  ways  isn't 
that  rock  pretty  well  consolidated? 

Miller:  No.  I  don't  think  so.  I  don't  have  that  much 
experience  drilling  in  the  chimney,  so  some  of  these  things  are  what 
I  believe.  If  it  collapsed  in  one  big  plug,  all  at  once,  instantaneously, 
naturally  you  probably  wouldn't  have  that  much  difference.  But  if 
it  did  the  slow  caving  thing,  until  it  finally  built  up  to  the  surface, 
it  would  be  different. 

When  they  drilled  back  right  after  the  shot,  I  don't  know  how 
you  could  have  learned  anything  about  the  chimney,  the  way  they 
pumped  tremendous  volumes  of  mud  in  the  hole  to  try  to  get  the 
cuttings  away,  and  contain  the  radioactive  gases.  I  don't  see  how 
a  person  could  get  any  knowledge  from  any  of  those  holes. 


388 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  People  have  told  me  that  they  have  mined  back  in 
the  tunnels,  and  that  there  was  at  least  one  time  when  they  mined 
right  through  where  the  working  point  was,  and  you  couldn't  tell 
when  you  hit  the  chimney.  It  was  just  competent  rock  all  the  way 
through. 

Miller:  They  have  actually  mined  back  to  GZ.  But  you  can  tell. 
The  one  I  did  you  could  see.  I  went  up  there  with  Walt  Nervik  and 
Ken  Oswald,  because  they  wanted  to  get  some  radiochemical 
samples.  They  actually  went  up  to  the  wall  with  a  pick,  and  got  the 
radioactive  glass.  You  could  tell  where  the  cavity  edge  was,  because 
this  cavity  had  formed,  and  the  rubble  had  come  in  there.  There  was 
a  definite  difference  from  one  of  the  tunnel  beds  tuff  into  that 
rubble  zone,  at  least  on  the  one  1  saw.  There  was  a  difference. 

Carothers:  When  you  do  a  drillback,  how  do  you  know  when 
you  hit  the  chimney? 

Miller:  Well,  there's  several  things.  I  always  felt  very 
comfortable  out  there  on  a  post-shot  drilling  rig  until  we  got  close 
to  the  chimney,  then  I  always  was  sure  things  were  going  to  start 
happening.  There  were  some  of  them  where  we  would  drill  into  the 
chimney  edge,  drill  fifty  feet,  and  get  stuck.  When  we  get  to  what 
we  call  the  chimney  rubble,  it's  rock  that's  being  pressed  together 
by  the  overburden,  and  when  we  put  drilling  fluid  in  there,  things 
happen  down  there.  Sometimes  things  pretty  bad. 

One  morning  in  Area  20  we  were  drilling  along,  and  we  were 
into  the  chimney.  About  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  I  thought  a 
truck  had  run  into  the  trailer  I  was  in.  I  ran  outside,  and  everybody 
was  running  toward  GZ,  because  they  thought  it  had  collapsed. 
Anyway,  I  started  to  go  over  there,  and  I  couldn't  see  any  dust.  The 
driller  said,  "Don't  go  up  there,  come  up  here."  We  never  did  get 
the  drill  pipe  out  of  there.  We'd  had  an  underground  collapse  and 
the  pipe  was  stuck  at  the  chimney  edge,  the  theoretical  chimney 
edge.  We  always  figured  the  cavity  radius  had  gone  straight  up, 
because  we  had  no  other  thing  to  go  on.  That's  where  the  pipe  was 
stuck,  and  that's  where  we  shot  it  off.  That  happened  several  times. 
Things  happen  down  there  in  that  chimney  that  don't  happen  before 
you  get  to  it,  and  they're  all  bad  for  drillers. 


Depths  of  Burial,  Drilling 


389 


Carothers:  I  have  heard  that  one  of  the  reasons  they  went  away 
from  drilling  straight  down,  to  the  angle  drilling,  was  that  there  was 
a  shot  which  had  not  collapsed,  and  the  geophones  were  quiet.  So 
they  moved  a  rig  in,  they  were  drilling,  and  all  of  a  sudden  the  drill 
stem  droped  about  sixty  feet.  Have  you  heard  that  story? 

Miller:  Yes.  I  know  what  hole  it  was,  and  I  know  the  guy  that 
was  there.  What  happened  was,  there  was  no  collapse,  but  they 
moved  in  two  rigs  forty  feet  from  the  GZ,  one  on  each  side.  They 
really  crammed  the  rigs  in  together  in  those  days.  They  used  two 
because  usually  one  of  them  never  got  to  total  depth.  Even  down 
in  the  crater  a  lot  of  times  they  would  use  two  rigs  because  it 
increased  your  chances  for  success. 

Anyway,  they  set  the  surface  casing  at  about  eighty  feet  on 
both  rigs,  but  one  rig  broke  down.  They  drilled  with  the  other  one 
to,  I'd  say,  thirty  feet  below  the  surface  casing  and  the  tools  just  fell 
in  the  hole.  Well,  everybody  says,  "It's  fixing  to  collapse.  It  could 
collapse."  So,  everybody  evacuated  the  rig.  The  rigs  were  still 
sitting  there.  It  was  Tiny  Carroll  who  said,  "I  want  volunteers  to  go 
in  there  and  tear  those  rigs  down."  Now,  who  is  going  to  tear  a  rig 
down  except  the  roughnecks?  There's  nobody  else  qualified.  So  the 
roughnecks  went  in  and  tore  the  rigs  down  and  hauled  them  out. 

That's  one  of  the  reasons  they  went  to  angle  rigs,  but  the  main 
reason  was  that  you  can  drill  from  the  side  and  be  in  undisturbed 
rock  most  of  the  time.  You  stay  out  of  the  chimney,  so  it  was 
quicker,  easier,  and  had  more  chance  of  success.  You  didn't  have 
to  build  the  road  down  in  the  crater.  And  we  could  preset  the 
surface  casing  and  have  that  all  done  ahead  of  time,  which  you 
couldn't  do  in  the  crater.  Angle  drilling  was  just  like  a  discovered 
America  for  post-shot  drillers.  It  was  that  kind  of  a  step  forward. 


Drill  rigs  at  the  bottom  of  a  subsidence  crater, 
drilling  to  obtain  samples  for  radiochemical  analysis. 


391 


15 


Emplacement  Holes 
Stemming,  Plugs,  And  Cable  Blocks 

Let  us  suppose  a  location  has  been  selected  for  an  event.  It  is 
far  enough  from  permanent  installations  such  as  roads  and  power 
substaions  that  the  ground  shock  won’t  cause  damage.  In  consulta¬ 
tion  with  the  USGS,  information  about  the  geologic  setting  is 
examined  to  insure  there  are  no  anomalous  features  which  might 
compromise  containment.  A  hole  is  drilled  to  a  depth  appropriate 
for  the  yield  of  the  device,  and  logs  are  run  to  confirm  that  the 
formation  is  as  expected.  The  device  and  the  diagnostic  instruments 
are  lowered  into  the  hole  together  with  their  attached  cables.  Since 
this  is  a  simple  event,  there  is  no  line-of-sight  pipe  extending  from 
near  the  device  part  way  or  completely  to  the  surface.  In  this 
idealized  scenario  none  of  the  many  things  that  can  occur  to  make 
life  difficult  for  the  field  people  and  the  containment  people  have 
happened.  Everything  so  far  looks  good. 

Except  .  .  .  a  hole  perhaps  eight  feet  in  diameter  and  several 
hundred  feet  deep  has  been  put  into  the  geologic  medium  that 
appears  to  be  well  suited  to  contain  the  projected  detonation  and  its 
radioactive  by-products.  And,  some  tons  of  metal  and  other  mate¬ 
rials  have  been  placed  at  the  bottom  of  the  hole.  There  are  perhaps 
a  hundred  or  so  cables  that  carry  diagnostic  data  and  firing  signals 
running  from  the  working  point  to  the  surface.  Now  the  problem  is 
to  make  the  emplacement  hole  and  cables  no  easier  a  path  to  the 
surface  for  gases  than  the  the  undisturbed  medium.  The  hole  has  to 
be  filled  with  something,  and  filled  in  such  a  way  that  the  cables  are 
not  damaged  or  broken.  Loss  of  data  due  to  a  broken  diagnostic 
cable  is  not  a  trivial  matter,  but  it  can  usually  be  tolerated,  and 
perhaps  the  desired  information  obtained  on  a  subsequent  event. 
Loss  of  the  cables  that  carry  the  firing  signals  to  the  device  is  quite 
another  matter,  and  creates  a  very  serious  problem.  And  that  has 
happened  due  to  poor  stemming  methods  and  badly  chosen  materi¬ 
als. 


392 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


The  cables  themselves,  individually  and  collectively,  are  a 
problem,  even  if  undamaged.  It  has  been  demonstrated  many  times 
that  gas  entering  the  broken  and  open  end  of  a  coaxial  or  multi- 
conductor  cable  can,  under  modest  driving  pressures,  travel  inside 
the  outer  insulating  jacket  of  the  cable  for  hundreds  of  feet.  Cables 
are  round,  and  bundling  together  a  hundred  or  so  round  cylinders 
about  an  inch  in  diameter  leaves  many  open  channels  for  gas  flow. 
Many  of  the  small  seepages  that  were  reported  on  the  events  in  the 
sixties  occurred  through  the  cables  and  cable  bundles. 

Finally,  when  the  stemming  material  is  emplaced,  you  want  it 
to  stay  there  after  the  shot  has  been  fired.  Where  could  it  go?  Into 
the  cavity,  of  course,  and  it  has  happened  that  stemming  material 
has  fallen  from  the  emplacement  hole  into  a  cavity  that  did  not 
collapse  for  some  time.  Or,  it  could  fall  into  the  apical  void  that 
typically  forms  at  the  top  of  a  collapse  that  does  not  reach  the 
surface,  leaving  an  open  path  for  gas  transport. 

Faced  with  such  problems  in  emplacement  hole  stemming,  Los 
Alamos  and  Livermore  have  taken  different  approaches  to  solving 
them. 

Carothers:  Bob,  how  did  the  Los  Alamos  stemming  plan 
evolve?  You  started  with  just  pea  gravel  and  cal-seal. 

Brownlee:  Well,  remember  we  started  out  in  1 957  only  trying 
to  cut  the  fallout  down.  We  saw  the  efficacy  of  plugs,  because  if  we 
put  in  a  plug  somewhere,  that  did  a  pretty  doggone  good  job.  One 
of  the  tests  we  did  was  to  have  just  a  plug  half  way  down  in  the  pipe 
—  nothing  else.  Then  we  did  one  with  a  plug  that  sat  just  a  little  ways 
above  the  bomb.  Same  kind  of  plug,  but  it  did  a  much  better  job. 
It  really  cut  the  stuff  down.  We  said,  "Well,  that  makes  sense.  If 
you  hold  it  in,  it's  going  to  blow  a  bigger  hole  because  it  can't  go 
up,  and  it  will  get  rid  of  more  energy  right  there  in  place.  And  that's 
a  good  idea."  That's  how  we  got  started. 

Then  we  came  to  '6 1 ,  and  we  said,  "All  right,  we  want  to  put 
a  plug  down  low."  And  we  had  discussions  about  the  stuff  that  was 
coming  out.  "How  is  it  coming  out?  How  are  we  measuring  it?" 
Well,  we  were  not  measuring  it  so  we  could  distinguish  between 
whether  it  was  coming  out  through  the  stemming  or  whether  it  was 
coming  out  of  the  cables.  We  didn't  really  know.  So  we  went  with 
hand-held  meters  to  a  cable,  and  it  was  hot.  Well,  it  was  coming  out 
of  the  cables,  and  it  was  coming  out  of  the  stemming  too. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks  393 

So  we  put  some  cal-seal  on  top  of  the  hole.  What  if  we  put 
some  cal-seal  lower  down,  and  kept  the  gas  down  lower?  "Well,  the 
gas  is  in  the  casing  of  the  emplacement  hole,  and  it  doesn't  matter 
where  you  stop  it.  Besides,  you  have  the  ground  shock,  which  will 
just  break  the  cal-seal  loose  from  the  side  of  the  casing  and  the  gas 
will  come  on  up  anyway."  It  wouldn't  do  that  if  the  casing  had  a 
good,  clean,  dry  wall,  and  wasn't  all  covered  with  rust.  So  we  did 
some  experiments,  not  at  the  Test  Site,  of  pouring  grout  in  iron 
casings  that  had  not  been  cleaned  out,  and  ones  that  were  cleaned 
out.  We  did  this  all  very  slowly  —  when  I  tell  the  story  it  sounds 
more  logical  than  it  really  was,  but  these  questions  kept  being 
addressed. 

We  finally  decided  to  try  some  fines,  some  finer  grained  gravel. 
Okay,  some  fines.  What  if  you  just  gathered  up  some  surface 
material  and  dumped  it  down  there?  Would  that  do  a  better  job  of 
holding  the  gas  down?  I  think  I  came  across  the  philosophy  very 
early  that  the  farther  down  the  hole  you  can  keep  stuff,  the  better 
off  you  are.  So,  instead  of  putting  cal-seal  at  the  surface,  let's  put 
it  down  in  the  hole.  Well,  the  moment  we  started  talking  about 
pouring  cal-seal  downhole,  the  J-6  engineers  had  massive  hemor¬ 
rhages.  "That  can't  be  done.  Impossible.  And  besides  the  cables 
will  have  leaks,  they'll  get  water  in  them,  and  we  won't  get  any 
data." 

Okay,  let's  get  away  from  the  cal-seal.  Let's  just  put  in  some 
fines  material  as  a  plug,  and  see  if  that  helps.  Yes,  it  seems  to.  How 
many  of  these  fines  plugs  do  you  have  to  put  in?  It  all  depends  on 
the  shot.  Now,  this  business  of  "it  all  depends  on  the  shot"  means 
that  you  have  to  tell  the  engineers  in  the  field  to  do  something 
different  each  time,  and  we  all  know  that  they  rarely  have  the  mental 
capacity  for  that.  Therefore,  what  we  need  to  do  is  have  a  standard 
stemming  plan.  If  the  yield  is  big  this  thing  works,  and  if  the  yield 
is  small  that  thing  works.  And  you  can  always  pour  a  little  cal-seal 
on  top. 

Then  you  can  order  your  stemming  by  the  foot,  and  they 
understand  that.  You  just  say,  "However  deep  the  hole,  just  start 
by  putting  in  a  fines  layer,  and  every  so  many  feet,  put  in  another 
one."  Then  they  don't  have  to  think.  You  don't  have  to  give  them 
a  magic  formula  for  each  shot,  and  they  just  have  this  one  thing  to 
do. 


394 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


And  then  you  go  out  and  discover  they're  cheating  !  They're 
not  really  putting  in  the  layers  at  the  places  that  you  said  they 
should.  So  you  read  them  the  riot  act,  and  they  say,  "But  why?  It 
doesn't  matter  where  they  are."  Well,  that's  sort  of  right,  but  you 
say,  "We've  got  to  know  where  they  are  anyway."  And  so,  there 
evolved,  finally,  LASL  Standard  5.  We  said,  "Okay.  You  do  it  that 
way,  and  we'll  watch  to  see  that  you  do  it  that  way.  No  more  of  this 
discussion  of 'Why  can't  it  be  different?  Why  can't  it  be  random?' 
You  do  it  the  way  we  said."  We  evolved  to  that,  and  it  worked  fine. 

So,  the  reason  why  our  Los  Alamos  Standard  5  stemming  plan 
had  such  a  perseverance  was  because  we  never  happened  to 
challenge  it  in  a  way  that  required  us  to  make  any  change.  And 
therefore  it  lasts  to  this  day. 

But,  if  you  look  very  closely,  you'll  find  that  we  have  the 
standard  plan,  but  you'll  also  find  it's  modified  here  and  there.  This 
thing  has  actually  been  moved  a  little  bit  up,  and  the  spacing  is  a 
little  different,  for  instance.  If  you  look  into  it  you'll  discover  that 
it's  not  quite  as  standard  as  everybody  thinks. 

I  think  I  have  to  say  that  the  LASL  Standard  5  stemming  plan 
was  notably  successful  for  our  shots,  which  tended  to  be  pretty 
much  the  same,  in  the  sense  that  there  was  a  time  when  we  did 
relatively  simple  things.  Livermore  was  doing  exotic  things,  and  so 
they  never  knew  quite  what  was  going  to  happen,  but  we  always 
knew  what  was  going  to  happen.  The  yield  was  not  going  to  be  more 
than  this  much,  and  we  could  be  pretty  sure  of  that.  We  did  things 
that  even  if  they  failed,  they  didn't  fail  wrong,  they  failed  safe. 
Therefore,  our  stemming  plan  handled  the  things  we  were  doing 
adequately,  and  I  think  it's  fair  to  say  that  is  true. 

As  we  got  better  the  fines  became  different  kinds  of  fines.  The 
coarse  became  different  kinds  of  coarse.  But,  as  we  got  the  ability 
to  calculate  these  things,  we  discovered  those  fines  were  awfully 
good.  No  matter  how  they  were  shaken  up  with  ground  shock  they 
still  bonded  as  tightly  to  the  casings  as  ever,  or  to  whatever,  because 
we  did  a  lot  of  shots  with  casings.  We  discovered  that  by  the  time 
the  gas  had  gotten  around  very  many  of  those  layers  the  pressure  in 
the  cavity  had  fallen,  and  it  was  all  over.  We  had  lots  and  lots  of 
those  layers,  not  just  three  or  four. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks 


395 


There's  one  more  thing  that  we  did  different  from  Livermore 
in  the  early  times,  which  was  all  to  our  advantage.  We  allowed  the 
stemming  to  breathe  for  a  long  time;  we'd  pour  some  stemming  in 
and  we'd  let  it  sit  while  any  trapped  air  came  out,  and  pour  some 
more  stemming  in.  It  was  very  slow.  We  did  this  as  much  for 
convenience  as  for  understanding  whatwas  goingto  happen,  I  think. 

The  Livermore  attitude  was,  "We're  going  to  shoot  tomorrow, 
we're  behind  schedule,  and  so  we  will  just  dump  in  all  the  sand." 
Livermore  frequently  worked  behind  the  power  curve.  It's  just  that 
simple;  they  were  behind,  and  you  could  always  catch  up  all  the  time 
in  the  stemming  process.  Whereas,  we  had  a  schedule  where, 
literally,  we  were  usually  ready  a  week  or  two  early.  So,  you  could 
take  all  the  time  you  wanted.  You  stem,  then  you  go  down  to  the 
Steak  House  and  have  dinner,  and  come  back  tomorrow  to  stem 
some  more.  This  allowed  our  stemming  to  solidify,  and  all  the 
breathing  was  gone.  On  the  other  hand,  Livermore  started  having 
collapses  of  stemming.  The  stemming  would  suddenly  slump,  and 
it  would  tear  the  cables  off,  and  it  got  expensive.  The  only  reason 
they  changed  is  because  it  got  expensive. 

However,  I  felt  that  it  was  important  to  containment,  and  we 
started  arguing  that  you  needed  to  get  the  air  out  of  the  stemming; 
you've  got  to  let  those  fines  compact  and  you've  got  to  let  them 
settle.  So,  finally,  the  rate  of  stemming  became  a  containment 
issue. 

Hindsight  says  we  had  to  stem  slowly  whether  we  knew  it  or 
not,  because  we  didn't  dare  not  let  those  fines  take  time.  As  a 
result,  we  never  had  any  slumps  of  stemming.  Finally,  the  argument 
was  that  the  reason  we  stemmed  slowly  was  so  we  wouldn't  have 
slumps,  but  that's  the  engineers'  argument.  From  the  containment 
point  of  view  we  were  arguing  you  are  stemming  slowly  because  it 
has  something  to  do  with  containment,  not  just  slumps.  But  a 
slump,  if  it  broke  the  cables,  was  very  expensive. 

Then  we  did  a  shaft,  and  now  we  had  a  great  huge  opening; 
twenty  feet  by  twenty  feet.  Now  you  have  slumps  no  matter  how 
slowly  you  stem;  there's  a  bubble  there,  it  works  it's  way  up,  and  the 
stuff  slumps.  So,  we  got  caught  on  one  of  the  shafts  where  we  had 
a  slump  which  tore  some  cables.  It  turned  out  that  we  were 
stemming  so  slowly  we  could  go  down  and  repair  it  right  there,  so 
it  wasn't  very  expensive.  You  just  put  people  down  there  with  their 


396 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


soldering  irons  and  their  pliers.  In  a  shaft  you  can  get  to  it,  but  it's 
troublesome,  because  if  you're  stemming  you've  got  the  bomb 
down  there. 

Carothers:  Was  it  as  surprising  to  you  as  it  was  to  me,  Tom, 
that  you  could  not  pour  sand  down  a  rat  hole,  as  it  were?.  And  a 
very  big  rat  hole. 

Scolman:  Yes,  and  I  think  it  surprised  the  people  who  poured 
it  down.  We  found  out  the  hard  way  that  it  was,  indeed,  possible 
to  bridge  certainly  a  four  foot  diameter  hole,  and  probably  a  hole 
of  any  diameter  you  want,  and  have  the  stemming  fall  in  later.  So 
the  thing  that  started  first  off  was,  "Okay,  what  is  it  that  we  can 
really  fill  a  hole  with?"  And  so  we  came  up  with  the  requirements, 
for  example,  of  dry  material  and  material  of  a  certain  size. 

The  notion  of  alternating  coarse  and  fine  layers  came  before 
my  time;  it  was  in  existence  when  I  got  there.  My  belief  is  that  was 
done  so  one  could  say  with  confidence  that  the  permeability  of  the 
stemming  column  was  lower  than  the  permeability  of  the  surround¬ 
ing  medium.  Remember  we  were  mostly  in  cased  holes  in  those 
days.  I  think  the  ability  to  emplace  the  material  was  as  important 
a  part  of  the  criteria  as  the  permeability.  Whether  that  was  so  or 
not  I  don't  know,  because  as  I  said,  that  was  folklore  that  was  there 
when  I  came. 

Keller:  When  I  came  to  Los  Alamos  in  1966  the  only 
interesting  events  were  the  line-of-sight  events.  We  barely  consid¬ 
ered  the  rest  of  them.  Charles  Brown  used  to  talk  a  lot  about  the 
quality  of  the  grout  job  behind  the  casing,  but  that  was  about  the 
main  concern  for  the  normal  emplacement  hole  event.  The  line-of- 
sight  pipes  involved  the  only  challenging  containment  problems,  as 
far  as  I  saw  them. 

Carothers:  The  Nuclear  Test  Ban  Treaty  had  been  signed  in 
1 963.  A  fair  fraction  of  the  events  that  were  fired  during  the  mid 
to  late  sixties,  of  whatever  nature,  released  some  amount  of  activity. 
Some  of  the  amounts  were  pretty  small,  but  maybe  a  quarter,  or 
maybe  a  third  of  the  events  recorded  some  amount  of  leakage  at  the 
surface.  Was  that  considered  acceptable?  Why  wasn't  Charles 
Brown  worried  about  those? 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks  397 

Keller:  Well,  you  look  back  now  and  it  seems  cavalier,  but  at 
the  time,  while  any  leak  was  disliked,  the  seepage  of  noble  gases 
wasn't  considered  a  major  failure.  The  concerns  were  mainly  that 
there  would  be  so  much  flow  up  the  line-of-sight  pipe  that  you'd 
have  a  major  fallout  problem  from  the  venting.  The  next  level  of 
concern  was  that  you'd  have  enough  radiation  leakage  from  the 
event  to  fog  the  photographic  film  in  the  recording  trailers.  Below 
that,  it  was  just  an  operational  nuisance  to  have  a  leak.  Hot  cables 
were  pretty  common. 

But  there  was,  even  before  Baneberry,  a  deliberate  attempt  to 
limit  the  leakage  to  nothing.  Then,  as  now,  )-6  stemmed  the  holes. 
And  the  question  was  whether  or  not  the  stemming  would  work  well 
enough.  The  LASL  Standard  5  was  the  stemming  plan  for  all  the 
shots,  and  it  had  been  developed  early  on.  It  was  developed  partly 
to  avoid  slumping;  that's  the  reason  the  coarse  materials  are  in 
there.  The  coarse  material  is  terrible  stemming,  if  you  consider  gas 
flow,  but  it  doesn't  slump  and  that  was  why  they  used  so  much  of 
it.  Then  they  put  in  the  fines  layers,  in  moderation,  to  get  some 
impedance  to  gas  flow. 

The  last  event  I  worked  on  before  Baneberry  was  Manzanas, 
and  that  was  the  first  event  where  Los  Alamos  used  coal-tar  epoxy 
plugs.  That  was  the  hated,  messy  stuff  that  Livermore  had  dreamed 
up,  and  J-6,  Rae  Blossom  and  company,  were  not  the  least  bit 
interested  in  being  caught  using  a  Livermore  material.  The  whole 
idea  was  abhorrent.  So,  I  ran  into  a  lot  of  resistance  in  trying  to 
design  a  stemming  plan  when  I  requested  coal-tar  epoxy  plugs  on 
Manzanas.  And  yet,  it  was  pretty  clear  that  the  stemming  plan  for 
Manzanas  would  be  better  if  it  had  some  impermeable  plugs  in  it 
instead  of  just  coarse  and  fines.  So,  they  finally  relented,  and  it  was 
used. 

Carothers:  ]ack,  Livermore  and  Los  Alamos  have  always  had 
different  stemming  plans.  Do  you  know  why  that  is  so? 

House:  I  guess  I  would  have  to  sum  it  up  by  saying  Livermore 
has  been  far  more  adventuresome  in  looking  at  different  types  of 
stemming  material  and  stemming  plans,  and  to  some  degree  I  think 
that  is  an  artifact  of  Livermore  having  dedicated  engineers,  who  are 
paid  to  go  out  and  look  for  new  and  different,  and  perhaps  better, 


398 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


ways  to  do  things.  Los  Alamos  has  never  had  the  engineering 
resources  to  address  questions  of  that  nature,  and  be  adventure¬ 
some.  I  hate  to  cry  poor,  but  this  is  really,  to  some  degree,  the  case. 

When  I  joined  the  containment  business,  the  stemming  plan 
was  pretty  simple.  It  was  the  LASL  5,  with  alternating  layers  of 
coarse  and  fines,  with  the  coarse  lifts  always  being  about  four  to  five 
times  longer  than  the  fines  material.  They  had  begun  using  an 
additional  type  containment  feature  that  was  known  as  coal-tar 
epoxy,  or  CTE.  It  was  awful  stuff  -  -  ultimately  deemed  unsuitable 
for  use  by  humans.  The  plan  was  pretty  much  defined,  and  we  used 
that  basic  plan  with  little,  if  any,  alteration. 

Now,  that  stemming  plan  works,  and  there  is  an  element  of,  "If 
it  aint  broke  don't  fix  it."  The  other  thing  about  the  LASL  5  basic 
stemming  plan,  which  features  the  alternating  layers  of  coarse  and 
fines  material,  is  that  we  are  very  fond  of  the  apparent  attenuation 
properties  of  the  three  meter  thick  lifts  of  fines  that  exist  in  our 
holes,  as  far  as  slowing  the  gas  down  as  it  tries  to  find  its  way  toward 
the  surface.  Recently  Livermore  has  chosen  to  use  long  lifts  of 
sanded  gypsum  concrete,  and  that  seems  to  work  fine  for  them. 

Carothers:  As  I  recall,  before  Baneberry  one  of  the  things  that 
was  done  about  leaking  cables  was  to  go  back  in,  cut  the  cables,  stuff 
the  ends  into  the  surface  casing,  and  pour  cal-seai  on  them. 

Olsen:  That  was  SOP  for  a  long  time.  We  started  using  gas 
blocks  not  long  before  Baneberry;  there  were  two  or  three  events 
before  Baneberry  where  we  had  gas  blocks.  Those  were  for  multi¬ 
conductor  cables,  which  were  pretty  leaky.  At  the  time  coaxs  also 
leaked.  We  were  looking  at  how  to  gas  block  coaxs,  which  you  could 
do,  but  you  had  to  use  bulkhead  connectors,  which  the  experiment¬ 
ers  didn't  like.  We  ended  up  manufacturing  gas  blocked  cable,  to 
avoid  as  much  as  possible  putting  something  discrete  in  the  line. 

We  were  also  looking  at  cable  fanouts  before  Baneberry.  The 
event  which  sort  of  tripped  the  whole  thing  on  cable  fanouts  was 
Pod.  We  had  some  downhole  motion-diagnostics,  and  part  of  the 
accelerometer  and  velocity  gauge  is  a  thermister  to  measure  the 
temperature,  because  the  damping  is  temperature  sensitive.  We 
saw,  way  up  the  hole,  inside  the  cable  bundle  where  this  package  was 
buried,  that  the  temperature  went  up  to  that  of  steam,  give  or  take 
a  little.  After  a  little  thought  it  became  obvious  that  we  had  nice 
conduits  in  the  cable  bundle,  which  let  the  gas  go  straight  up. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks 


399 


Carothers:  What  was  the  origin  of  the  plugs?  Were  they 
material  to  seal  the  cable  bundle? 

Olsen:  The  first  plugs  were  on  line-of-sight  shots.  We  had 
some  plugs  on  line-of-sight  shots  where  the  plug  was  more  a  matter 
of  structure  than  containment.  Usually  those  holes  were  cased,  and 
the  plugs  were  there,  most  commonly,  to  tie  the  pipe  to  the  casing, 
to  control  the  response  to  the  ground  motion.  Los  Alamos  was 
doing  a  number  of  line-of-sight  shots  too,  and  they  started  to  look 
into  using  plugs  of  some  sort.  I  think  they  had  a  concrete  plug  on 
Finfoot. 

Then,  because  of  the  diagnostics  we  had,  we  slowly  began  to 
realize  these  things  were  also  stopping  gas  that  was  coming  up  the 
stemming.  We  were  looking  at  various  things  in  stemming  columns, 
putting  in  radiation  and  pressure  transducers.  For  stemming  we  put 
fines  in,  and  coarse  in,  and  sometimes  NTS  dirt.  Sometimes  in  the 
sixties  you  would  fill  the  hole  with  anything  you  could  get  a  bucket 
loader  into. 

We  tried  cement,  and  on  Plaid  we  had  a  polymer  plug.  That 
stuff,  which  was  a  sloppy,  milky  mixture,  set  up  into  a  plug  that  was 
kind  of  the  consistency  of  a  tough  gum  eraser.  I  think  it  was 
probably  one  of  the  best  plug  materials  we've  ever  had.  We'd  still 
be  using  it,  but  it  was  so  damnably  expensive,  even  then.  But  it  was 
great,  because  it  didn't  fracture,  and  it  was  really  tough.  It  wasn't 
structural  per  se,  but  it  did  tie  things  together,  and  it  stopped  flow 
around  closures,  which  was  the  thing  that  we  had  in  mind. 

Carothers:  There  was  a  shot  on  Pahute  Mesa  where  somebody, 
who  shall  be  nameless,  had  a  concrete  plug  poured,  and  somebody 
else  forgot  about  exotherms,  and  so  the  cables  got  hot,  softened  and 
shorted  out. 

Olsen:  Ah  yes.  On  Greeley  and  Duryea  both  we  had  those 
problems. 

Carothers:  People  learn  slowly,  don't  they?  One  might 
wonder  why  it  took  two  times  to  get  people's  attention.  It's  strange 
to  look  back  on,  and  you  wonder,  "How  could  such  a  stupid  mistake 
be  made  once,  and  how  could  it  possibly  be  made  twice?" 

Olsen:  I  agree  with  you,  but  I  think  it  was  part  of  the  lack  of 
a  detailed  overview.  There  were  people  doing  their  own  little  thing, 
and  it  never  occurred  to  the  mechanical,  or  civil  engineers  that  the 


400 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


cables  could  have  a  problem.  And  it  never  occurred  to  the  electrical 
engineers  that  these  guys  who  had  been  dumping  stemming  into 
holes  for  years  would  come  up  with  something  to  screw  up  the 
cables.  And  we  did  not  have  an  overview  that  looked  at  these 
interactions.  I'm  not  sure  that  we  still  have  that  to  quite  the  extent 
that  we  should. 

Carothers:  Was  that  concrete  plug  for  containment? 

Olsen:  The  early  things  that  went  on,  on  Pahute,  were  kind  of 
funny,  because  some  of  the  stemming  things  that  went  on  were  done 
by  engineers,  who  almost  tried  to  second-guess  containment.  We 
didn't  design  it.  Some  event  engineer  would  say,  "Well,  containment 
is  probably  going  to  want  a  plug,  so  I'll  throw  in  a  plug."  So  we'd 
see  the  plan,  and  there  would  be  the  plug.  So,  okay.  Not  knowing 
that  it  should  be  somewhere  else,  or  whatever,  we  thought  that  was 
great,  that  we  were  finally  getting  some  respect,  and  they  were 
putting  in  a  plug.  On  Pahute,  where  we  had  never  had  any 
experience  with  problems,  and  because  there  were  no  long  lines  of 
sight,  or  anything  like  that,  we  didn't  really  look  at  the  stemming 
very  carefully. 

Carothers:  Something  that  Livermore  started  to  use  routinely 
was  one  or  more  solid  plugs  in  the  stemming  column,  which  would 
support  the  stemming  above  them,  and  also  be  an  impediment  to  gas 
flow.  Why  did  you  think  plugs  were  necessary,  and  start  to  use  the 
coal-tar  epoxy  mix? 

Olsen:  In  retrospect  that  particular  thing  probably  got  its 
rudiments  from  Scroll.  After  we  looked  at  the  results  for  a  while, 
we  realized  that  we  had  a  plug  there,  but  the  cement  was  in  the 
wrong  place,  and  the  stemming  all  ran  into  the  cavity.  If  we  had  put 
it  in  the  right  place  we  could  have  put  in  a  lot  less,  and  it  would  have 
done  a  better  job. 

Hudson:  I  guess  we  really  started  worrying  about  plugs  as 
containment  features  in  Area  2,  where  we  had  subsurface  subsid¬ 
ences,  followed  by,  perhaps,  the  displacement  of  gas  to  near  the 
surface,  through  the  chimney.  We  weren't  quite  sure  how  the  gas 
got  to  the  surface,  if  it  did.  But,  if  it  did,  it  seemed  to  occur  in 
several  stages.  During  some  of  the  earlier  stages  we  appeared  to 
have  radioactive  gas  going  up  the  stemming  column  rather  easily. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks 


401 


And  so,  we  argued  that  putting  in  plugs  to  better  block  the  flow  of 
gas  was  a  good  idea.  Those  were  more  for  a  gas  block,  I  guess,  than 
they  were  for  a  stemming  platform. 

I  don't  remember  just  when  it  was  we  decided  that  we  needed 
a  stemming  platform.  It  was  primarily  driven  by  the  idea  of  a 
subsurface  subsidence,  where  a  significant  amount  of  gas  would  be 
displaced  perhaps  halfway  to  the  surface,  after  which  we  might  have 
some,  or  all  of  the  stemming  fall  into  the  void  at  the  top  of  the 
subsidence.  Any  kind  of  stemming  fall  would  eliminate  the  imped¬ 
ance  between  that  pocket  of  gas  and  the  surface.  We  wanted  to 
avoid  that.  Riola  was  a  perfect  example  of  where  we  needed  a 
stemming  platform,  and  we  had  one  that  didn't  work. 

Carothers:  I  remember  one  occasion,  and  there  were  probably 
others,  before  Baneberry,  where  there  was  a  stemming  fall.  The 
device  went  unexpectedly  low  yield.  It  was  buried  quite  deep,  and 
only  went  about  a  kiloton.  That  left  a  standing  cavity  into  which  all 
the  stemming  fell,  leaving  an  open  hole  to  the  surface.  So,  I  believe 
stemming  falls  do  occur.  But  again,  the  LASL  argument  is,  "Well, 
the  fines  bridge,  and  we  never  lose  stemming." 

Hudson:  After  starting  to  use  instrumentation  in  the  past  few 
years  to  monitor  the  performance  of  their  stemming,  they  have  seen 
gas  halfway  up  the  stemming  column,  on  some  events,  in  a  fairly 
short  period  of  time.  They've  also  actually  observed  their  stemming 
column  falling  into  the  void  above  a  chimney.  Now,  they  will  argue 
that  they  expect  the  stemming  to  bridge;  they  expect  the  stemming 
not  to  fall.  But  you  may  remember  a  CEP  meeting  where  I  asked 
Wendee  Brunish  if  they  thought  they  could  depend  on  that.  She 
said,  "No,  but  we  don't  really  need  it  anyway."  So,  they've  lost 
confidence  in  their  stemming  as  being  a  dependable  bridging 
mechanism. 

Carothers:  The  Livermore  stemming  has  been  criticized  in  the 
last  year  or  two  on  the  grounds  that  most  of  the  stemming  is  just 
gravel,  with  a  few  plugs  of  gypsum  concretein  it.  How  did  you  arrive 
at  that  kind  of  design?  Was  it  based  on  measurements  you'd  made? 

Hudson:  I  think  the  current  design  is  driven  more  by  the 
philosophy  of  "good  enough  is  good  enough"  than  by  measure¬ 
ments.  The  only  place  you  really  block  the  emplacement  hole  is 
where  you're  blocking  the  cable  bundle  and  the  cables  themselves. 


402 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


So,  long  stretches  of  low  permeability  stemming,  where  you  don't 
do  anything  about  the  cable  bundle,  is  not  effective  anyway.  Los 
Alamos,  on  the  other  hand,  has  reasoned  that  stretches  of  coarse 
material  will  give  the  gases  a  chance  to  get  out  into  the  overburden. 
So,  maybe  a  mix  of  low  permeability  and  high  permeability  stem¬ 
ming  is  a  good  idea  —  that  was  their  argument. 

The  current  Livermore  plan  is  sort  of  a  blend  of  Livermore  and 
Los  Alamos  philosophy.  The  only  benefit  that  the  coarse  can 
possibly  have,  from  a  containment  point  of  view,  is  to  allow  the  gas 
to  expand  and  come  into  contact  with  the  porous  medium  around 
it.  And  that  may  be  good.  If  you  have  a  continuous  cable  bundle, 
surrounded  by  low  permeability  material,  it  will  certainly  be  a  much 
better  conduit  than  a  cable  bundle  surrounded  by  a  very  porous  and 
permeable  material.  In  either  case  we've  always  felt  that  the  only 
real  block  to  the  flow  of  gas  is  a  location  where  you  block  everything 
across  the  hole,  including  the  cable  bundle. 

Carothers:  You  put  the  gas  blocks  there,  the  fanouts  there,  the 
impermeable  plug  there,  and  that's  presumably  where  the  gas  will 
stop.  Now,  it  has  seemed  strange  to  some  people,  me  included,  who 
visualize  the  process  as  the  device  going  off,  the  cavity  forming,  and 
maybe  a  lot  of  noncondensable  gases  in  the  cavity  which  move  out 
through  the  medium,  which  has  some  kind  of  permeability.  This  gas 
should  move  out  more  or  less  spherically,  somewhat  like  a  bubble, 
and  when  it  comes  to  the  plug,  which  is  perhaps  forty  or  fifty  square 
feet  in  area,  the  surface  area  of  that  bubble  is  thousands  of  square 
feet.  So,  the  gas  just  flows  on  around  the  plug,  so  what's  the  use 
of  the  plug? 

Hudson:  I  think  the  plugs  in  the  stemming  column  can  only  be 
effective  at  quite  early  times.  Certainly  what's  in  the  stemming 
column  can't  stop  what's  going  on  outside  the  stemming  column, 
and  so  you're  right  there.  Sooner  or  later  the  gas  is  going  to  travel 
as  a  bubble,  and  this  is  probably  what  happens  on  Pahute  Mesa, 
where  you  have  late-time  breathing.  Even  though  we  block  it  in  the 
emplacement  hole,  there  are  enough  fractures  to  allow  the  gas  to 
expand  until  it  finally  intersects  other  fractures  that  reach  the 
surface,  after  many  hours,  or  days. 

Carothers:  Late-time  seepage  out  of  the  cracks  on  Pahute  Mesa 
could  be  due  to  the  fact  that  most  of  the  material  covering  the  Mesa 
is  the  Rainier  Mesa  member,  which  was  laid  down  while  it  was  hot. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks  403 

As  it  cooled,  it  cracked.  It's  several  hundred  feet  thick,  and  the 
cracks  are  not  necessarily  through  going,  but  gases  can  move  from 
one  to  the  other.  In  that  context,  that  rock  is  almost  not  there  to 
prevent  the  very  slow  seepage  of  gas.  It  provides  overburden,  but 
not  gas  blocking.  Does  that  seem  to  be  a  reasonable  scenario  to  you? 

Hudson:  Statistically  it  certainly  seems  sound.  A  study  that 
was  done  did  strongly  suggests  that  there  is  a  correlation.  When  this 
Rainier  unit  is  exposed  to  the  surface,  certainly  well  over  half  the 
time  you  end  up  with  some  late-time  seepage,  or  breathing  as  it  is 
called.  Whereas,  when  you  don't  have  that  member  exposed,  you 
don't  have  that  seepage.  There  are  other  circumstances  from  time 
to  time  also,  like  rad  chem  drilling,  which  are  hard  to  sort  out.  On 
the  Barnwell  event  there  may  or  may  not  have  been  a  very  late-time 
seep  without  the  post-shot  hole,  but  there  is  evidence  that  the  post¬ 
shot  hole  was  involved  in  a  flow  of  gas  toward  the  surface.  So,  it's 
maybe  not  as  simple  as  the  statistics  imply.  The  fact  that  we  don't 
see  these  late-time  seeps  on  Pahute  when  we  don't  have  this  material 
exposed  at  the  surface  is  an  indicator  that  there's  probably  some¬ 
thing  to  the  theory. 

Peterson:  Something  that  we  did  for  Livermore  was  a  program 
on  atmospheric  pumping  and  why  gases  come  out  of  underground 
shots  at  long  times  after  the  shot.  I  think  it  has  given  them  a  little 
different  picture  of  why  gases  come  out  of  chimneys. 

The  history  of  it  goes  back  a  long  way.  When  we  did  the  DNA 
chimney  pressurization  experiments,  and  we  looked  at  the  tracer 
coming  up  to,  say,  the  top  of  the  chimney  and  detected  it,  one  can 
imagine  that  when  you  put  gas  into  a  chimney,  the  gas  you're 
putting  in  is  expanding  as  in  a  balloon.  If  that  were  the  case,  if  you 
sampledat  the  top  of  the  chimney  you'd  see  no  tracer  for  a  while, 
but  eventually,  when  the  balloon  got  up  to  where  you  were 
sampling,  you'd  see  the  concentration  that  you  were  putting  in. 

Well,  obviously  this  doesn't  happen,  because  Mother  Earth 
isn't  uniform.  If  we  look  at  the  results  we  got  from  the  DNA 
chimneys,  we  started  detecting  the  tracer  maybe  a  factor  of  ten 
earlier  in  time  than  you  would  expect  if  were  expanding  like  a 
balloon.  If  we  should  have  seen  it  in  forty  hours,  we'd  see  it  in  four 
hours  at  the  top  of  the  chimney  when  we  had  hardly  any  pressure 
up  there.  In  thinking  about  that  for  a  while,  it  became  somewhat 
obvious  that  the  theory  that  one  gets  gases  out  of  chimneys  just  by 


404 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


simple  atmospheric  pumping  —  in  other  words,  atmospheric  highs 
and  lows  —  is  not  the  right  picture.  That's  a  driver,  but  that's  not 
why  it  comes  out.  In  order  to  get  the  gas  to  come  out  you  need  non¬ 
uniformities  in  the  material,  and  it  sort  of  bootstraps  its  way  out. 

I  talked  to  Livermore  about  it  because  I  knew  they  were 
interested  in  it  many  years  ago.  They  thought  we  were  crazy,  or 
whatever,  but  more  recently  they  became  somewhat  more  inter¬ 
ested.  So  we  set  up  an  experiment  with  a  sand  column,  in  a 
plexiglass  tube,  about  four  inches  in  diameter,  maybe  six  feet  high. 
We  had  a  void  region  at  the  top  that  represented  the  atmosphere, 
and  a  void  region  at  the  bottom  that  would  represent  a  cavity,  for 
example.  The  sand  represented  the  alluvium,  and  you  can  go 
through  the  equations  and  scale  things  so  you  get  the  relative 
volumes  almost  correct. 

The  hypothesis  was  that  if  it's  just  atmospheric  pumping  in  a 
uniform  medium,  as  you  think  of  alluvium,  you  would  get  gas  out. 
I  really  didn't  think  you  would.  So  we  did  a  number  of  experiments. 
In  one  of  them  we  set  it  up  with  a  uniform  sand  column,  and  we  put 
gas  with  a  tracer  in  the  bottom  chamber  that  represented  the  cavity. 
In  another  one  we  put  gas  with  a  tracer  in  the  bottom,  but  we  put 
a  pump  on  the  top  that  would  vary  the  pressure,  as  atmospheric 
cycles  do.  Because  this  is  all  scaled  one  can  do  a  lot  of  cycles  in  a 
fairly  short  time,  and  we  ran  it  for  four  or  five  thousand  cycles.  It 
was  equivalent  to  a  thousand  years  of  atmospheric  pumping.  Well, 
sure  enough,  when  we  monitored  the  tracer  up  in  the  top  volume, 
the  tracer  concentration  in  the  one  that  wasn't  pumped  turned  out 
to  be  exactly  the  same  as  the  one  that  was  pumped.  The  pumping 
made  absolutely  no  difference  whatsoever. 

The  pumping  is  a  driver,  but  you  need  some  nonuniformities. 
So,  we  made  a  second  sand  column  in  which  we  put  one  permeability 
of  sand  in  an  outer  annulus,  and  a  different  permeability  of  sand  in 
the  center.  We  used  a  very  thin  aluminum  pipe  in  the  column  so  we 
could  fill  the  center  with  one  sand,  and  the  outside  annulus  with 
another  sand.  We  did  two  columns  that  way.  We  left  the  pipe  in 
one  of  those  columns,  but  pulled  the  pipe  out  of  the  other  one  so 
the  two  sands  could  talk  to  one  another.  Well,  in  the  one  where  the 
two  sands  could  talk  to  one  another  the  tracer  came  up  very  fast. 
The  column  where  the  pipe  was  still  in  acted  just  like  the  one  that 
was  absolutely  uniform. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks  405 

So,  the  whole  thing  on  this  pumping  business  is  that  you  need 
the  atmospheric  pumping,  but  it  is  the  degree  of  nonuniformity  that 
exists  that  makes  it  work.  It  is  the  small  fractures,  or  nonuniformities 
in  permeability,  that  determine  how  fast  the  atmosphere  can  pump 
these  gases  out.  When  it  is  nonuniform,  some  gas  flows  up  in  the 
fast  flow  paths,  and  as  it  does  that  it  diffuses  out  to  the  side.  When 
the  atmospheric  pressure  changes  it  can't  push  all  the  stuff  that's 
diffused  out  to  the  side  back  down.  And  so,  on  the  next  atmospheric 
low,  a  little  more  moves  up  and  diffuses  out,  and  tends  to  stay  there 
during  the  next  high.  If  you  have  a  lot  of  these  nonuniformities, 
then  the  gas  can  move  up  quite  a  bit  faster  than  if  you  have  a  fairly 
uniform  medium.  That's  a  containment  thing  that  we  have  looked 
at  and  studied,  and  I  think  we  found  some  interesting  answers. 

We're  still  doing  some  work  on  it.  There  are  a  bunch  of 
models,  and  part  of  the  work  we're  doing  is  to  look  at  some  of  those 
experimental  results.  There  is  some  data,  and  we're  trying  to  look 
at  it  to  see  whether  we  can  characterize  what  the  formation  looks 
like,  and  why  it  has  done  what  you  see  that  it  has  done.  You  can 
say,  "Gee,  it  would  be  nice  to  learn  all  these  things,  and  then 
somebody  could  go  out  and  drill  one  drill  hole,  and  they  would  know 
whether  that's  the  perfect  place  to  do  a  test  or  not."  I  think  we're 
a  long  way  from  that.  But  I  think  you  have  to  learn  these  things,  and 
get  an  understanding  of  what's  happening,  even  to  be  able  to  make 
the  judgment  as  to  whether  you're  ever  going  to  be  able  to  do 
something  like  that  or  not. 

Carothers:  The  things  that  have  been  done  in  the  field  since 
Baneberry  have  essentially  eliminated  the  seeps  and  leaks  through 
the  stemming  and  the  cables  that  had  happened  on  both  Laborato¬ 
ries'  shots  fairly  often  before  then.  What  did  Los  Alamos  do  about 
the  cables,  for  instance? 

Scolman:  We  had  been  gas  blocking  multi-conductors  before 
Baneberry.  After  that  we  started  gas  blocking  coaxial  cables.  And, 
we  pushed  for  the  development  of  continuously  gas  blocked  cables. 
As  I've  often  told  people,  anytime  you  break  a  cable  you're  asking 
for  trouble.  For  example,  when  you  look  for  trouble  with  wiring  in 
your  house,  or  car,  you  don't  go  to  the  middle  of  an  existing  run  of 
wire;  you  look  at  the  connectors. 

Carothers:  Did  you  ever  do  cable  fanouts  before  Baneberry? 


406 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Scolman:  I  don't  think  so.  They  were  initially  a  pain  until  we, 
and  I  think  in  this  case  until  Livermore,  figured  some  simpler  ways 
to  do  it.  We  did,  for  a  while,  have  big  three-dimensional  cages 
where  the  cables  were  physically  separated  from  each  other.  They 
were  a  pain  to  put  down.  And  most  of  the  time  when  we  found  we 
had  a  cable  problem  going  downhole,  it  was  either  where  we  had  put 
a  gas  block  in,  which  involved  breaking  a  cable  and  putting  in  a 
physical  connector,  or  going  through  a  fanout.  We  made  a  point 
that  whenever  we  were  going  downhole,  when  we  had  gone  by  cable 
gas  blocks,  which  in  general  meant  a  fanout  in  the  same  area,  before 
we  went  any  further  we  required  a  complete  cable  check.  We  didn't 
want  to  put  the  device  downhole  and  then  find  out  we  had  to  bring 
it  back  later.  And  we  did  have  trouble  doing  those  things.  We  also 
did  an  awful  lot  of  experimentation  to  try  to  do  things  that  were 
probably  not  possible  to  do.  One  of  the  early  requirements  was  that 
our  cable  gas  blocks  and  our  plugs  in  the  casing  should  be  able  to 
handle  five  hundred  psi.  We  found  pretty  soon  that  probably  was 
not  possible. 

The  plugs  were  the  problem.  The  cable  gas  blocks  you  can 
make  that  good,  but  you  can't  make  the  plugs  that  good.  The  other 
problem,  of  course,  is  that  if  you're  going  to  tell  somebody  that  a 
downhole  plug  is  good  for  five  hundred  pounds,  you  better  be  able 
to  test  it  in  place.  That's  pretty  tough  to  do,  unless  you  put  a  pipe 
down,  and  force  a  whole  hell  of  a  lot  of  air  down  there  to  start  with. 
So,  that  requirement  on  the  plugs  went  away,  but  we  did  a  lot  of 
work  trying  to  do  things  like  that. 

Carothers:  My  impression  is  that  Los  Alamos  came  to  the  use 
of  plugs  somewhat  reluctantly.  Why  was  that,  aside  from  the  fact 
that  they're  expensive,  messy,  and  a  pain  to  emplace? 

Scolman:  I'd  agree  that  it  was  reluctantly.  We  didn't  really 
think  they  were  necessary.  We  had  a  body  of  experience  that  said 
fines  plugs  were  very  effective.  When  you  say  'plugs',  generally 
what  you  really  mean  are  'stemming  platforms.' 

Carothers:  They're  called  a  couple  of  different  things  depend¬ 
ing  on  who's  talking  about  them.  And  I  suspect  the  people  in  the 
field  who  were  emplacing  them  called  them  a  lot  of  things  we 
needn't  mention. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks 


407 


Scolman:  To  my  knowledge,  at  least  in  my  time,  I  don't  believe 
Los  Alamos  ever  claimed  one  of  their  plugs  was  a  stemming 
platform. 

Carothers:  Well,  Tom,  I  have  been  on  the  CEP  for  many  years, 
and  I  have  seen  the  Los  Alamos  presenters  perform  various  interest¬ 
ing  verbal  contortions  to  avoid  calling  them  stemming  platforms. 

Scolman:  They  were  directed  not  to  do  so.  We  did  not  believe 
that  the  material  being  used  for  these  plugs  was  the  kind  of  physical 
material  that  one  could  count  on  to  stop  a  stemming  fall.  In  other 
words,  coal-tar  epoxy  is  not  a  strong  material.  It's  a  little  bit  like 
asphalt. 

There  was  some  pressure  for  us  to  follow  the  Livermore  lead 
and  call  the  plugs  stemming  platforms,  as  guards  against  a  loss  of 
stemming.  Our  field  engineering  group  got  their  backs  up  and  said, 
"Look,  we're  not  going  to  tell  you  that  it's  a  stemming  platform 
unless  we  do  something  to  engineer  it  to  be  a  stemming  platform. 
For  example,  put  in  a  reinforced  cage  and  some  high  strength 
concrete."  We  did,  by  the  way,  for  quite  a  while,  put  a  concrete 
layer  under  the  lowest  plug  to  protect  the  coal-tar  expoxy  from 
heat.  That  was  a  bit  of  a  push  toward  saying,  "Okay,  it  is  indeed 
a  stemming  platform."  At  least  there  was  protection  from  hot  gases 
being  there  right  at  that  surface.  But  we  were  -  -  reluctant  is  too  mild 
a  word  -  -  not  going  to  buy  in  to  the  coal-tar  epoxy  plugs  as  stemming 
platforms. 

Carothers:  Well,  you  were  ultimately  proven  to  be  right. 
There  was  Riola,  the  coal-tar  epoxy  stemming  platform  was 
challeneged,  failed,  and  all  the  stemming  fell  out.  That  led  to 
different  kinds  of  plugs.  LANL  now  is  using  two-part  epoxy,  aren't 
they? 

Scolman:  Yes.  I  think  that  was  driven  as  much  as  anything  by 
the  toxicity  of  the  coal-tar  epoxy.  Plus  the  fact  that  I  think  it's  a  little 
cheaper.  I've  forgotten  the  numbers,  but  some  appreciable  fraction 
of  the  cost  of  the  stemming  material  was  made  up  by  the  coal-tar 
epoxy  plugs.  And  frankly.  I've  always  considered  them  chicken  fat 
-  -  just  something  that  makes  you  feei  better.  Particularly  the  lower 
ones. 


408 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Something  that  has  always  bothered  me  is  that  I  think  if  Los 
Alamos,  in  particular,  can  be  faulted  in  any  way  for  the  containment 
regime  we've  gotten  ourselves  into,  it  would  be  because  the  things 
we  do  were  designed  for  cased  holes.  We  now  use  them  almost 
exciusiveiy  in  uncased  holes,  and  many  of  the  things  that  are  done 
don't  make  very  damn  much  sense  in  an  uncased  hole.  Including 
using  impervious  plugs  in  a  pervious  medium. 

Carothers:  Billy,  the  Livermore  plugs  are  supposed  to  support 
the  stemming  in  the  event  that  the  stemming  is  lost  beneath  the 
plug.  Will  they  do  that?  How  do  you  know? 

Hudson:  We  advertise  that  the  top  two  plugs,  the  plugs  that 
are  forty  or  so  feet  thick,  are  stemming  platforms.  We  believe, 
based  both  on  calculations  and  experiments,  that  any  of  our  gypsum 
plugs  would  act  as  a  stemming  platform,  even  if  they  were  only 
twenty  feet  thick.  We  have  never  seen,  based  on  our  measurements, 
a  gypsum  plug  fail  as  a  stemming  platform,  even  though  it's  been  as 
thin  as  twenty  feet.  But  then,  we've  only  had  them  challenged  a 
small  number  of  times.  The  twenty  foot  plugs,  I  think,  have  only 
been  challenged  twice. 

Carothers:  You  mean  by  challenged  that  there  has  been  a  loss 
of  stemming  below  the  plug,  the  plug  stayed  there  and  the  stemming 
above  the  plug  stayed  there,  so  they  worked? 

Hudson:  Yes. 

Carothers:  The  coal-tar  plugs  were  emplaced  by  pouring  the 
gravel  and  the  coal-tar  in  at  the  top  of  the  hole  at  the  same  time, 
but  seperately.  One  of  the  criticisms  of  that  process  was  that  you 
really  didn't  know  what  kind  of  plug  was  formed  when  those 
materials  reached  the  bottom  and  presumably  mixed. 

Hudson:  That's  why  we  now  mix  the  material  before  we  put 
it  downhole.  Instead  of  just  letting  it  dribble  down  the  side  of  the 
hole  we  now  put  it  in  through  a  pipe  until  it's  within  about  fifty  feet 
of  its  final  resting  place.  I  like  to  describe  the  process  we  were  using 
in  the  past  as  like  throwing  gravel  and  cement  over  the  top  of  your 
house,  hoping  to  get  a  patio  in  your  backyard. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks 


409 


Kunkle:  Brian  Travis  tried  to  model  the  heating  and  cooling  of 
coal-tar  epoxy  plugs.  In  Los  Alamos  holes  this  was  the  material  we 
emplaced  as  rigid  plugs,  at  the  time.  CTE,  as  we  knew  it  by  it's 
initials. 

Carothers:  Over  a  couple  of  Los  Alamos  engineers'  dead 
bodies,  probably. 

Kunkle:  Well,  that  material  could  certainly  make  you  dead  if 
you  came  into  contact  with  too  much  of  it.  I  was  astounded  when 
I  first  got  here  to  learn  they  would  actually  use  this  stuff  in  any  field 
setting. 

A  thing  I  recall  from  graduate  school  is  watching  a  colleague, 
Dave  Lolley  in  the  Physiology  Department,  who  studied  rats  and  rat 
problems.  One  of  the  rat  problems  he  would  cause  is  skin  cancer, 
which  he  would  cause  by  simply  painting  coal-tar  onto  the  skin  of 
the  rat.  After  a  few  weeks,  the  rat  had  skin  cancer.  So,  I  was  sort 
of  shocked  to  find  we  were  using  coal-tar  in  rather  large  amounts  at 
the  Nevada  Test  Site. 

At  any  rate,  one  of  the  calculations  that  I  was  watching  Brian 
Travis  do  was  the  expected  heating  of  the  plugs  -  -  the  rise  in 
temperature  due  to  the  exotherm  as  the  epoxy  set,  and  the 
subsequent  decline  in  temperature  -  -  as  indicated  by  the  thermisters 
in  the  plugs.  They  didn't  make  any  sense.  This  must  have  been  in 
July,  August,  September,  1980. 

We  could  make  no  heads  or  tails  of  those  downhole  tempera¬ 
ture  measurements.  A  tentative  conclusion  we  reached  was  that  the 
coal-tar  and  the  gravel  that  was  put  into  it  -  -  it  was  a  coal-tar 
concrete  -  -  must  not  have  been  well  mixed  together.  There  must 
have  been  some  plugs  where  one  side  was  mostly  coal-tar,  and  over 
on  the  other  side  it  was  mostly  gravel. 

Each  plug  was  different,  and  none  of  them  behaved  as  they 
should.  That  was  a  puzzlement  to  us.  And  then,  it  must  have  been 
September,  October,  the  Livermore  Riola  event  seeped  a  tiny 
amount  of  gas  to  the  surface.  That  caused  quite  a  stir,  because  one 
of  the  coal-tar  epoxy  plugs  had  failed  to  hold  the  stemming  material 
that  was  above  it.  The  plug  simply  wasn't  there.  Reentry  observa¬ 
tions  showed  that,  indeed,  it  was  probably  never  there.  That  is,  the 
stuff  had  been  put  in  the  ground  but  it  had  never  formed  into  a 
monolithic  uniform  plug. 


410 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Brownlee  detailed  me  at  that  time  to  go  study  coal-tar  epoxy 
plugs,  and  the  problems  that  were  plaguing  them.  I  dutifully  took 
on  this  assignment,  and  together  with  Billy  Hudson  we  formed  a 
little  outfit  we  called  the  Stemming  Plans  and  Stemming  Modifica¬ 
tion  group,  otherwise  known  as  SPASM.  We  investigated  coal-tar 
epoxy  plugs,  how  the  Laboratories  were  emplacing  them  and  using 
them,  and  how  well  they  might  be  performing.  This  involved 
pouring  plugs,  full-scale  plugs,  in  a  hundred  foot  deep  hole  we  had, 
and  pulling  them  back  up.  Then  we  broke  them  apart  to  see  what 
was  in  them.  And  we  found  that,  as  the  calculations  had  suggested, 
those  downhole  plugs  were  miserable. 

They  were  not  what  they  were  planned  to  be,  but  they  had 
properties  similar  to  those  you  might  have  inferred  from  simple 
downhole  diagnostics;  the  temperature  records.  They  were  not 
uniformly  mixed.  They  were  segregated;  sometimes  into  layers  of 
nearly  pure  coal  tar  epoxy,  sometimes  layers  of  gravel,  and  that  type 
of  behavior  could  have  been  inferred,  and  partially  was  inferred 
from  the  temperature  records.  There  were  diagnostics  that  coal-tar 
epoxy  had  been  put  down  the  hole,  and  that  it  was  reacting,  because 
it  had  generated  heat. 

Carothers:  It  had  generated  heat,  the  temperature  had  risen, 
and  then  had  started  down.  Therefore  it  was  setting  up,  and 
becoming  a  rigid  plug.  I  suspect  that  the  people  who  were  making 
those  measurements  used  the  temperature  records  only  to  say, 
"Well,  see  the  temperature  has  come  down  and  the  plug  is  now 
cured.  Therefore,  we  can  shoot." 

Kunkle:  That's  right. 

We  began  talking  about  the  the  replacement  of  coal-tar  epoxy 
with  an  alternate  material.  We,  Los  Alamos  and  Livermore,  finally 
settled  on  a  water-based  epoxy,  Celanese  by  brand  name.  We  both 
put  TPE,  two-part  epoxy,  plugs  in  for  a  while. 

This  episode  of  switching  from  coal-tar  epoxy  to  two-part 
epoxy  involved  a  lot  of,  "Well,  let's  look  back  through  the  records 
and  see  what's  actually  happened  on  our  past  events."  This  was  a 
time  to,  quite  literally,  review  all  of  our  post-Baneberry  under¬ 
ground  nuclear  tests  for  how  they  were  stemmed,  what  downhole 
diagnostics  were  put  in  and  what  those  diagnostics  might  have  seen. 
The  thermistors  were  the  in-situ  diagnostics  in  the  plugs  and  there 
were  sometimes  something  about  plug  performance.  There  were 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks 


411 


also  radiation  and  pressure  monitors,  RAMS  units,  instruments  to 
measure  surface  accelerations,  occasionally  some  downhole  accel¬ 
erations  -  -  that  kind  of  stuff.  We  went  through,  shot  by  shot, 
reviewing  our  history  of  Los  Alamos  stemming.  That  got  me  pretty 
familiar  with  what  we  had  done  in  the  past,  and  why,  and  what 
problems  had  been  encountered. 

Carothers:  Those  coal-tar  plugs  had  been  used  for  many  years, 
more  than  ten,  at  least. 

Kunkle:  We  first  put  them  in  just  before  Baneberry,  on 
Manzanas.  And  before  the  Baneberry  event  we  had  a  design  for  a 
shot  which  would  have  some  in  it,  but  that  shot  was  fielded  after  the 
Baneberry  stand  down. 

Carothers:  The  lesson  to  be  learned  from  coal-tar  plugs  is  that 
probably  during  that  ten  or  so  year  period  all  of  those  plugs  had  been 
very  poorly  mixed.  And  that  was  okay  because  nobody  knew  it. 
People  would  say  to  the  Panel,  "We  have  a  stemming  plan  like  this, 
and  we  have  these  coal-tar  plugs.  They  have  been  used  successfully 
on  x-teen  events."  Then  one  day  one  got  challenged.  And  it  failed. 
Until  a  feature  has  actually  been  challenged  and  survives  the 
challenge,  a  statement  like,  "Well,  we're  going  to  put  in  gypsum 
concrete.  We  have  used  that  successfully  ten  times,"  doesn't  mean 
very  much. 

Kunkle:  In  the  pre-Baneberry  era,  the  shots  were  without 
plugs.  We  saw  many  small  releases,  but  they  were  acceptable  under 
the  guidelines  at  the  time.  They  didn't  seem  to  much  bother 
anybody,  and  it  was  fairly  well  understood,  by  at  least  a  few  people, 
where  they  were  coming  from.  That  was  flow  in  cable  bundles  and 
such. 

The  coal-tar  epoxy  was  introduced  to  stop  the  flow  in  the  cable 
bundles.  That  was  it's  real  purpose  for  us  at  Los  Alamos;  at  least 
that's  why  we  started  using  it.  And  it  seems  to  have  worked  pretty 
well  at  that,  even  if  it  didn't  ever  set  up  into  a  real  plug.  When  we 
did  introduce  the  coal-tar  epoxy  plugs,  and  used  them  routinely 
after  the  Baneberry  stand-down,  along  with  the  cable  gas  blocks,  the 
small  releases  we'd  seen  near  surface  ground  zero  stopped.  And  so 
the  coal-tar  epoxy  plugs  were  quite  satisfactory  from  some  stand¬ 
points,  but  they  were  not  structurally  competent  to  serve  as 
stemming  platforms. 


412 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


House:  TPE  is  not  the  ESstH  problem  that  CTE  was  in  terms 
of  handling,  and  it  is  a  much  more  suitable  plug  because  it  does,  in 
fact,  become  a  rigid  plug.  There  was  a  confirmed  suspicion  that  coal 
tar  might  never  get  hard  and  set  up,  and  could,  in  the  event  of  a 
stemming  fall  below  a  plug,  perhaps  drain  away.  And  in  one 
confirmed  instance,  it  did.  We  have  seen  physical  evidence  in  terms 
of  pictures  provided  to  the  Panel  of  just  that  happening.  And  that 
event  in  and  of  itself  really  spurred  conversion  to  some  other  type 
of  plug  material. 

TPE  is,  unfortunately,  a  far  more  expensive,  in  terms  of  pour 
per  linear  foot,  than  Livermore's  sanded  gypsum  concrete.  But  for 
some  reason,  that  I  won't  attempt  to  address,  our  field  operations 
people  have  been  not  particularly  receptive  to  making  a  move  to 
sanded  gypsum  concrete.  I  think,  cost  notwithstanding,  and  if  I 
remember  the  Chairman's  sermon,  delivered  more  than  once,  cost 
is  not  to  be  considered  a  factor  in  containment  design,  we  at  Los 
Alamos  favor  the  TPE  because  of  its  properties.  Albeit,  we  are  in 
a  process  now  of  reducing  the  number  of  TPE  plugs,  and  replacing 
one  of  them  with  a  grout  mix  designated  as  HPNS-5,  which  means 
Husky  Pup  Neat  Slurry,  which  seems  to  have  a  lot  of  reasonable 
properties,  and  is  far  easier  to  emplace  at  great  depth. 

Carothers:  How  do  you  emplace  the  two-part  epoxy  plugs? 

House:  Two-part  epoxy  is  emplaced  in  a  very  simple  fashion. 
It  is  pre-mixed  at  the  surface,  in  a  specially  configured,  or  specially 
insulated,  transit  mix  truck.  The  two-part  epoxy  is  called,  by  the 
Celanese  Corporation,  Part  A  and  Part  B.  Three-eights  inch  pea 
gravel  aggregate  is  added  to  it.  It  goes  through  a  mixing  process  and 
comes  out  of  the  truck,  down  a  chute,  and  free  falls  down  the  hole. 
At  one  time  we  attempted,  I  believe  on  the  Trebbiano  event,  to 
emplace  a  plug  at  990  feet  using  a  tremmi  pipe.  I  think  the  field 
engineering  folks  had  a  six  inch  tremmi  pipe  to  pour  the  stuff  down, 
and  it  didn't  go  down  very  well  at  all.  And  so  it  was  concluded  that 
trying  to  emplace  it  through  a  pipe  was  unsuitable,  and  we  have 
continued  with  the  free  fall  method. 

Carothers:  Do  you  have  any  concern  that  there  might  be  some 
separation  of  the  gravel  and  the  epoxy? 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks 


413 


House:  As  you  watch  it  come  out  of  the  chute,  out  of  the 
transit  mix  truck,  it's  easy  to  see  that  it  is  well  mixed,  and  the  epoxy 
has  enough  adhesive  properties  to  pretty  well  entrain  the  gravel  in 
it  as  it  goes  down  hole.  We're  talking  about  3/8  inch  aggregate, 
which  is  pretty  small.  Also,  although  admittedly  this  isn't  a  free  fall 
sample,  we  do  take  five  gallon  buckets  right  out  of  the  end  of  the 
chute,  and  go  test  it.  But  of  course,  that  doesn't  tell  you  what  it  is 
like  when  it  gets  to  the  bottom  of  the  hole. 

We  have  done  experiments  in  abandoned  or  unusable  emplace¬ 
ment  holes,  where  we  have  poured  plugs  at,  say,  1 20  feet,  and  then 
gone  down  and  cored  them,  and  done  some  sampling.  At  least  at 
that  kind  of  a  depth,  which  is  essentially  equivalent  to  the  standard 
location  of  the  top  TPE  plug,  we  find  them  to  be  pretty  well  mixed, 
far  more  so  than  the  old  coal-tar  plugs. 

Carothers:  Livermore  has  gone  through  a  series  of  stemming 
plan  changes.  Why  didn't  Livermore  observe  that  LASL  has  never 
had  a  seep  since  Baneberry,  think  their  stemming  plan  must  be 
pretty  good,  and  use  the  same  design? 

Hudson:  I  think  if  we  could  be  sure  we  had  the  same  sort  of 
working  point  medium,  which  we  probably  do  if  we  put  our  shots 
in  tuff,  it  probably  would  be  perfectly  okay.  The  alluvium  in  the  Los 
Alamos  areas  has  been  described  as  "more  forgiving"  in  that  their 
alluvium  is  less  cemented  than  most  of  the  Livermore  alluvium.  In 
fact,  they  have  difficulty  in  drilling  a  large  diameter  hole  in  their 
alluvium,  which  means  that  it  isn't  cemented  as  much;  it  doesn't 
hang  together. 

Consequently,  It's  always  been  a  question,  a  puzzle,  why  they 
have  historically  had  better  luck  than  Livermore.  Their  overburden 
material  won't  support  open  fractures  like  the  Livermore  overbur¬ 
den  will,  and  I  suspect  that's  the  main  reason.  In  practice  I  don't 
think  it  has  always  really  been  that  much  better.  Prior  to  Baneberry 
their  release  rate  wasn't  much  different  from  ours.  Since  Baneberry 
we've  had  two  seeps,  and  they've  had  zero.  What  sort  of  statistics 
are  those? 

There's  another  reason  for  the  changes  we  have  made.  We've 
always  paid  a  lot  more  attention  to  the  performance  of  our 
stemming  plans  than  Los  Alamos  has  to  theirs,  by  using  downhole 
monitors  to  see  what  goes  on.  When  we  saw  that  radiation  was 


414 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


getting  higher  in  the  hole  than  we  liked,  we  tried  to  make  changes 
to  stop  it.  Almost  all  of  the  time  those  threats  -  -  when  we  had 
radiation  higher  in  the  hole  than  we  wanted  -  -  would  not  have  led 
to  a  release.  We  were  only  concerned  that  they  were  an  indication 
of  something,  maybe,  worse  to  come. 

Los  Alamos,  on  the  other  hand,  has  for  the  most  part  ignored 
the  performance  of  their  stemming  plans.  It's  only  recently  that 
they've  started  fielding  very  many  downhole  radiation  detectors, 
for  example.  So,  I  suspect  that  they  were  fat,  dumb,  and  happy, 
while  we  were  trying  to  fix  things  that  weren't  ail  that  important. 

Carothers:  Well,  if  I  were  to  speak  on  the  side  of  Los  Alamos 
I  could  say,  "We  monitor  the  performance  of  our  stemming  plans 
with  the  ground  zero  radiation  monitors,  and  the  stemming  works 
just  fine." 

Hudson:  And  I  can't  argue  with  that.  If  you're  only  concerned 
with  yes  or  no,  as  opposed  to  how  and  how  well  containment  was 
achieved,  the  statistics  are  such  that  you  can't  argue  with  them. 

Rambo:  We're  the  only  ones  who  do  a  full  stemming  column 
calculation  for  the  vertical  shots.  We  include  the  stemming  column 
in  the  calculation.  For  many  years  all  we  did  was  the  outside  world, 
but  now  we  put  in  the  plugs.  We  have  material  properties  for  the 
coarse  material,  and  when  it  was  sand  we  had  that,  and  for  a  while 
we  were  putting  in  the  two-part  epoxy  plugs. 

Carothers:  Might  that  be  because  Los  Alamos  could  say,  "Why 
do  calculations?  We  never  have  any  trouble  with  our  stemming 
plan." 

Rambo:  That  was  true  until  recently.  But  you  can  say  that 
about  just  about  anything  in  containment.  Recently  they  had  a  shot 
where  gases  got  quite  a  ways  up  the  hole  because  some  of  the 
stemming  fell  out.  Before  that  they  didn't  have  that  kind  of 
problem.  They  thought  that  the  fines  layers  were  going  to  compress 
strongly,  because  they  showed  in  one  of  the  tunnel  shots  that  the 
fines  material  does  turn  into  something  pretty  hard.  That's  a 
sellable  argument.  We  ran  with  fines  layers  for  a  while  too,  in  the 
residual  stress  area,  but  we  had  some  leaks  past  them.  So  we  went 
to  sanded  gypsum  plugs,  thinking  they  might  be  even  better 
material,  and  we've  still  had  some  leaks  past  those  plugs.  It  didn't 
seem  to  make  any  difference  whether  we  had  one  or  the  other. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks  415 

Carothers:  It  has  always  seemed  a  little  surprising  that  a  plug 
would  matter.  In  an  uncased  hole,  when  gases  come  to  a  plug  why 
don't  they  simply  go  around  it?  They  can  go  into  the  native  material 
as  well. 

Rambo:  Sure.  And  I  imagine  they  do  in  many  cases.  The 
difficulty  is  that  once  they  get  into  the  stemming,  then  you're 
relying  on  man-made  items  to  stop  them  before  they  get  up  to  the 
surface. 

Carothers:  Livermore  uses  a  few  long  gypsum  plugs  in  a 
column  of  gravel.  That  gravel  has  probably  a  permeability  of  a 
hundred  Darcies  or  more.  Los  Alamos  uses  many  alternating  layers 
of  gravel  and  fines,  rather  than  a  lot  of  gravel  and  a  few  plugs. 

Rambo:  And  what  do  you  hear  when  you  talk  about  that  in  our 
containment  group?  You  hear  things  like,  "Gee,  it  costs  a  lot  of 
money  to  put  in  those  fines  layers." 

Carothers:  Of  course  it  does.  Almost  anything  you  do  is  more 
expensive  than  just  dumping  in  gravel.  Putting  in  sanded  gypsum 
plugs  isn't  free,  however. 

When  I  see  a  drawing  of  the  stemming  plan  at  the  CEP,  the 
vertical  and  horizontal  scales  are  different,  so  it  appears  that  the 
hole  is  rather  short,  and  pretty  big  in  diameter.  The  plugs  appear 
to  be  thinner  than  their  diameter.  Now,  if  you  showed  me  the 
stemming  plan  with  equal  vertical  and  horizontal  scales,  there  would 
be  a  long,  very  thin  emplacement  hole  with  a  few  long,  thin  plugs 
in  it.  Looking  at  that  kind  of  representation,  the  plug  appears  to  be 
just  a  small  irregularity  in  the  ground. 

Rambo:  Yes,  just  another  rock.  It  is  amazing,  but  there  have 
been  many  times  when  they've  measured  pressure  below  it,  or 
radiation  below  it,  and  not  measured  anything  above  it. 

I  think  it  also  helps  to  put  a  plug  in  the  so-called  residual  stress 
field,  because  you've  compressed  all  this  material,  and  flow  may 
indeed  stop  there.  The  cavity  pressures  that  they've  measured  seem 
to  be  decay  and  reach  a  plateau  where  they  sit  for  quite  a  while. 
That  suggests  to  me  that  there  is  leakage,  but  not  at  a  horrendous 
rate,  but  of  course  shots  are  different  in  this  regard.  The  pressure 
in  the  Cornucopia  cavity,  which  was  fired  in  a  fairly  weak  material, 


416 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


sat  there  for  a  number  of  hours  before  it  finally  decayed  all  the  way. 
It  was  down  around  twenty  bars,  which  is  fairly  low,  but  it  was  still 
there  for  a  fairly  long  time. 

It's  enough  to  say  there's  something  there  that  isn't  letting  all 
the  cavity  gases  go  out  immediately.  There  hasn't  been  enough  data 
to  put  the  whole  story  together  yet,  but  there  may  be  something 
there.  If  we  could  see  more  data,  perhaps  we  could  see  that  in  a 
weaker  material  there  is  something  which  happens,  or  doesn't 
happen,  so  the  gases  are  held  in  for  a  while. 

There  were  shots,  like  Roquefort  and  Coso,  where  calculations 
showed  them  close  to  the  margin,  and  they  had  radiation  high  in  the 
stemming  column.  I  think  one  of  the  failures  in  this  business  is  that 
when  we  have  radiation  up  the  stemming  column,  very  seldom  is 
anything  ever  done  post-shot  to  look  at  why  that  happened.  And 
without  ever  looking  at  that  you're  doomed  to  keep  repeating  it. 
You  never  learn  anything  unless  you  stop  and  take  stock,  and  say, 
"Why  don't  we  learn  something  about  this?"  The  constant  state¬ 
ment  is,  "Well,  it  contained."  But  by  how  much?  And  what  did  you 
learn  from  that?  That  part  of  the  process  is  dead. 

Carothers:  I  can't  remember  any  significant  post-shot  explo¬ 
ration  in  the  past  few  years. 

Rambo:  That's  right.  Anyway,  there  is  this  realm  of  calcula¬ 
tions  thatshows  things  on  the  margin  sometimes.  I'm  notsure  itwas 
totally  residual  stress,  but  I  looked  at  Roquefort  after  I  had 
presented  it  to  the  CEP,  and  I  said,  "Look,  there  are  some 
weaknesses  around  the  top  of  the  cavity."  I  told  the  containment 
scientist,  "It  looks  to  me  like  you  could  get  something  into  the 
stemming  column.  Even  though  there's  residual  stress  in  the  outside 
world  there  isn't  enough  residual  stress  to  close  across  this  coarse 
material  that  we're  using  for  stemming.  That's  hard  rock  with  lots 
of  permeability.  How  much  residual  stress  does  it  take  to  close  that 
off?  I  don't  know." 

That's  one  of  the  key  issues  that  we  don't  really  think  about 
very  carefully,  and  it's  part  of  the  difficulty  in  interpreting  the 
calculations.  I  told  them,  "I  see  you've  put  your  two  plugs  in  some 
very  weak  areas  in  the  hole.  If  you  do  get  gases  up  there,  it's  liable 
to  go  past  the  first  two  plugs."  Well,  that's  exactly  what  happened. 
And  at  that  point  I  quit  doing  that  because  I  was  ahead  of  the  game, 
and  it'll  probably  never  happen  again. 


Emplacement  Holes,  Stemming,  Plugs,  and  Cable  Bolcks 


417 


What  I'm  learning  in  this  process  is  that  maybe  I  shouldn't  be 
quite  so  positive  about  having  a  residual  stress  and  that  means  we're 
not  going  to  get  anything  up  the  stemming  column.  Of  course, 
we've  had  a  lot  of  successes,  and  that's  why  there's  such  limited 
experience.  The  failures  are  really  where  you  do  most  of  your 
learning. 

Carothers:  Billy,  in  summary,  why  should  there  be  two 
different  stemming  plans?  1  could  say,  "One  is  better  than  the 
other,  so  you  should  use  the  better  one."  Or,  "They're  both  equally 
good,  in  which  case  you  should  use  the  cheaper  one." 

Hudson:  It  really  is  not  terribly  rational  to  have  two  entirely 
different  stemming  plans.  I  think  we  are  getting  closer  together. 
Maybe  the  people  in  the  containment  programs  at  Livermore  and 
Los  Alamos  are  a  little  more  rational  today  than  they  were  in  the 
past.  But  one  wonders,  "Why  have  we  persisted  so  long  in  doing 
things  differently,  almost  for  the  sake  of  doing  things  differently?" 
I  think  we  probably  should  adopt  similar  stemming  plans,  and  similar 
ways  of  blocking  cable  bundles.  Parts  of  each  are  probably  better 
than  parts  of  the  other.  Parts  of  each  are  less  expensive  than  parts 
of  the  other.  Why  not  develop  a  compromise  which  is  as  good  as 
either  one,  and  costs  less  than  either? 


418 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Experiment  stations  in  tunnels  can  be  quite  large.  The  basic  limitation 
is  cost,  not  the  mining  technology. 


419 


16 

Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 

The  Livermore  people  did  the  first  several  tunnel  events, 
starting  with  Rainier  in  1957.  One  of  the  problems  that  concerned 
the  diagnostic  physicists  as  the  movement  to  underground  detona¬ 
tions  began  was  that  they  would  not  be  able  to,  on  an  underground 
detonation,  get  the  data  that  they  were  accustomed  to  getting  on 
atmospheric  shots.  Fast  camera  records  for  the  determination  of  the 
device  yield  from  the  growth  of  the  fireball,  for  example,  seemed  to 
be  out  of  the  question.  Or,  how  could  there  be  multiple  lines  of 
sight,  looking  at  the  reactions  in  different  parts  of  the  device?  And 
so  on. 

Brownlee:  The  guys  who  measured  things,  whether  they  were 
the  radiochemists,  or  the  physicists  measuring  reaction  rates,  or 
looking  at  neutrons  or  x-rays  or  gammas  or  whatever,  felt  that  they 
obviously  needed  to  test  in  the  atmosphere.  So,  when  we  got  ready 
to  go  underground  -  -  were  forced  to  go  underground  from  their 
point  of  view  -  -  there  was  the  hand-wringing,  the  weeping  in  the 
streets,  the  swearing,  because,  "We  can't  make  our  measurements 
any  more.  We  can't  learn  what  we  need  to  learn  about  the  bomb." 
Therefore,  if  they  had  to  go  underground  they  wanted,  always,  a 
pipe  that  looked  at  the  bomb  and  gave  them  a  solid  angle  that  was 
as  big  as  the  one  where  they  used  to  stand  for  an  atmospheric  shot. 
And  this  pipe  had  to  be  open  all  the  way.  That's  what  they  wanted. 

To  some,  a  tunnel  seemed  to  offer  the  best  way,  underground, 
to  provide  such  access  to  the  device.  In  principle  a  tunnel  could  be 
as  big  in  cross  section  as  someone  was  willing  to  pay  for.  Further, 
the  device  itself,  and  the  associated  firing  equipment,  could  be 
brought  in  and  the  device  made  ready  for  firing  in  a  way  very  similar 
to  the  way  it  was  done  on  the  atmospheric  shots.  Since  there  was 
personnel  access  to  detector  stations  until  very  near  shot  time, 
alignments  could  be  made  and  checked,  a  failed  detector  could  be 
replaced,  vacuum  leaks  could  be  repaired,  and  so  on.  All  of  these 


420 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


things  were  difficult  or  impossible  when  the  device  and  all  the 
experimental  equipment  had  to  be  lowered  down  a  relatively  small- 
diameter  emplacement  hole. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  there  was  to  be  no  release  of  radioactive 
materials  to  the  atmosphere,  somehow  the  opening  leading  to  the 
device  had  to  be  closed  after  the  desired  information  was  obtained. 
The  experience  was  mixed.  Rainier  had  released  no  radioactive 
material.  Nor  had  Logan,  which  had  a  line-of-sight  pipe  used  to 
allow  samples  to  be  exposed  to  the  device  output.  Neptune  and 
Blanca  had  vented.  Both  of  those  could  be  attributed  to  an  insuffi¬ 
cient  amount  of  material  over  the  detonation.  So,  it  seemed  that  an 
underground  detonation  with  a  pipe  of  some  size  to  allow  the 
radiation  from  the  explosion  to  reach  diagnostic  detectors,  or  to 
irradiate  samples  could  certainly  be  done  and  the  detonation  con¬ 
tained.  However,  as  later  tunnel  events  showed,  containment  of  the 
radioactive  products  was  not  as  simple  as  it  had  first  seemed,  nor 
was  it  easy  to  assure  the  protection  of  the  samples. 

But  first,  to  do  an  experiment  in  a  tunnel  the  tunnel  had  to  be 
mined.  Bill  Flangas  was  the  mining  superintendent  at  the  Test  Site 
for  many  years. 

Carothers:  I  have  asked  people  why  they  picked  Rainier  Mesa 
for  the  first  underground  tunnel  shot,  and  about  the  only  answers 
I  have  gotten  is  that  it  was  there,  and  it  was  good  minable  rock. 
What  do  they  mean  by  "good  minable  rock?" 

Flangas:  Well,  it's  a  rock  that's  in  the  neighborhood  of  a  couple 
of  thousand  psi  in  compressive  strength,  and  so  it's  easy  to  mine.  In 
the  tuffs  in  Rainier  it's  easy  to  drill  out  a  face,  and  once  you've 
drilled  it  you  didn't  even  have  to  use  full  strength  dynamite.  We 
were  using  25  to  30  percent  compared  to  the  usual  50  and  60  we 
use  in  hard  rock.  It's  the  kind  of  material  that  has  to  be  supported, 
but  it's  easily  supported.  In  those  days  we  were  using  wooden  sets, 
and  then  we  went  to  steel  sets,  and  used  some  rock  bolts.  Then  we 
went  to  wire  mesh  and  shotcrete,  which  is  a  mixture  of  cement  and 
water.  It's  a  modern  version  of  gunnite.  The  products  come  out  of 
the  nozzle,  where  they  are  plastered  up  against  the  wall.  It's  gotten 
refined  to  the  point  where  getting  six  and  seven  thousand  psi 
strength  with  shotcrete  is  pretty  routine. 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


421 


And  in  tuff  you  can  use  the  Alpine  Miner,  which  is  a  machine 
that's  like  a  tractor.  It's  got  a  boom,  and  on  the  end  of  the  boom 
is  a  rotating  cylinder,  which  has  carbide  bits  on  it.  This  boom 
articulates  up  and  down,  and  back  and  forth.  As  the  cylinder  rotates 
it  just  grinds  the  rock  away.  It  works  very  well  in  soft  rock,  like  tuff. 
It  wouldn't  touch  granite. 

During  the  Hardtack  II  operation,  from  September  12  to  Octo¬ 
ber  31,  1958,  seven  devices  were  detonated  in  tunnels  in  Rainier 
Mesa.  Neptune,  Logan,  and  Blanca  were  mentioned  in  Chapter  1. 
Mercury  (slight  yield).  Mars  (13  tons),  Tamalpais  (72  tons),  and 
Evans  (55  tons),  were  all  events  with  very  low  yields,  but  even  so  all 
but  Mercury  released  some  radioactivity.  Following  Tamalpais, 
fired  on  October  8,  1958,  there  was  an  noteworthy  incident  related 
to  the  gaseous  by-products  of  a  detonation,  which  were  not,  in  a 
sense,  contained. 

Flangas:  Tamalpias  was  where  we  had  the  infamous  hydrogen 
explosion.  When  we  shot  Tamalpias,  because  of  the  short  lived 
products,  some  of  the  early  readings  in  the  tunnel  were  up  there  in 
the  1 0,000  R  range.  And  so  the  consensus  was,  "Okay,  this  tunnel 
is  gone."  And  we  still  had  not  fired  Evans. 

We  had  been  working  seven  days  a  week,  twenty-four  hours  a 
day,  and  I  never  left  that  tunnel  day  or  night.  Most  of  the  time  I 
was  sleeping  on  my  desk.  By  the  time  we  shot  Tamalpais  some  of 
us  were  flat  wore  out.  So,  once  they  start  reading  those  kind  of 
numbers  it  looked  like  the  ball  game  was  over  as  far  as  that  tunnel 
went,  and  I  went  home.  I  got  home  about  nine  or  ten  o'clock  that 
night,  and  I  was  still  asleep  at  two  o'clock  the  next  afternoon  when 
a  call  came  through  that  said  to  hurry  on  back.  The  readings  were 
down  to  300  or  400  mR,  and  they  were  anxious  to  get  started  again. 
By  the  time  I  got  back  up  there  it  was  like  four  o'clock.  The 
Livermore  honchos  were  there,  and  some  of  my  troops  had  been 
assembled  and  they  were  there. 

I  asked  the  question,  "What  have  we  got."  They  said,  "It  looks 
like  the  highest  exposure  right  now  is  like  400  mR."  We  could  stand 
that  for  reentry.  And  then,  of  course,  my  next  question  was  about 
explosive  mixtures.  I  was  assured  that  there  was  no  explosive 
mixture.  What  had  really  happened  is  that  due  to  the  inexperience 


422 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


of  both  the  Lab  people  and  others,  the  meters  they  had  in  those  days 
got  saturated,  and  so  they  were  reading  zero,  when  in  fact  the  place 
was  loaded  with  hydrogen. 

I  went  into  the  tunnel  and  I  went  back  several  hundred  feet. 
The  hair  was  standing  up  on  my  head,  because  I  knew  there  was 
something  wrong,  but  I  couldn't  put  a  finger  on  it.  So,  I  came  back 
out,  and  I  repeated  the  question.  "How  are  we  in  terms  of  an 
explosive  mixture,  or  are  there  are  any  other  gases,  or  any  exotic 
gases  I  don't  know  anything  about?"  And  again  I  was  assured. 
"Quit  worrying  about  it.  You  do  not  have  an  explosive  mixture." 

I  went  back  in  the  tunnel.  We  were  doing  some  preliminary 
work  to  get  started,  because  it  was  important  to  get  ventilation 
established  so  we  could  clear  the  tunnel  out  so  we  could  proceed. 
I  came  back  out  again,  was  reassured  again.  As  I  ruled  out  every 
possibility,  it  occurred  to  me  to  wonder  if  my  antennae  weren't 
geared  to  an  oxygen  deficiency.  One  of  the  things  copper  miners 
fear  the  worst  is  oxygen  deficiency,  and  in  those  days,  in  a  copper 
mine,  under  Nevada  state  law,  you  had  to  provide  every  miner  with 
a  candle.  The  way  you  checked  for  oxygen  deficiency  was  with  a 
candle,  because  a  candle  goes  out  at  16%  oxygen,  or  thereabouts. 

Carothers:  You  can  also  check  for  hydrogen  that  way. 

Flangas:  Oh  boy,  can  you.  So,  anyway,  I  lit  the  candle,  and 
I  went  all  the  way  back  in  the  tunnel.  I  was  holding  it  just  about  chest 
level,  and  it  was  burning,  so  that  ruled  out  oxygen  deficiency.  The 
rad-safe  superintendent  had  climbed  up  on  a  sandbag  plug,  which 
was  at  about  the  700  station;  -  700  feet  from  the  portal.  And  he 
says,  "Hey  Flangas,  hand  me  that  candle."  So,  I  handed  him  the 
candle.  Well,  being  a  light  gas,  and  without  that  environment  having 
been  disturbed,  the  hydrogen  had  accumulated  along  the  top  of  the 
tunnel.  He  was  up  in  that  atmosphere,  and  Lordy,  Lordy.  I  was 
standing  in  the  middle  of  the  drift,  at  the  700  station,  and  he  was 
up  at  the  top  of  that  sandbag  plug.  He  said,  when  we  talked  to  him 
a  couple  of  days  later,  that  he  saw  a  flame  that  just  went  down  to 
the  1 200  station,  where  the  other  door  was,  and  he  was  fascinated 
by  the  sight.  I  was  standing  right  on  the  track  there,  and  the  next 
thing  I  knew  I  was  head  over  heels,  and  when  I  picked  myself  up,  I 
was  at  the  350  foot  station. 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


423 


I  have  no  idea  .  .  .  it  was  .  .  .  just  everything  was  in  motion. 
We  had  laid  plywood  along  that  entire  tunnel  to  protect  the  cables. 
That  plywood  was  shredded  to  sawdust,  to  small  fragments.  There 
was  a  six  inch  steel  door  at  the  350  footstation,  and  fortunately  one 
of  my  shifters  laid  the  track  across  there.  We  had  to  puli  the  track 
out  to  close  the  door,  so  when  we  opened  the  door,  we  put  the  track 
back  in.  That  six  inch  door  folded  over  that  track  into  a  U. 

Carothers:  Bill,  with  all  that  going  on,  how  come  you're  sitting 
here  today? 

Flangas:  I  have  never  been  able  to  figure  that  out.  I  came  out 
of  that  thing  without  a  scratch.  I  think  if  you  tried  it  a  million  times 
you'd  have  a  million  dead  miners  and  never  succeed  in  duplicating 
that. 

Carothers:  What  about  the  guy  who  was  up  on  the  sandbag 
plug? 

Flangas:  Fortunately,  what  happened  to  him  is  that  when  it 
went  off  the  concussion  knocked  him  down  to  the  base  of  the  plug, 
and  when  the  explosion  took  place,  it  blew  over  him.  Now,  in  that 
melee  I  turned  around  to  look  for  him.  My  miner's  lamp  was 
shattered,  and  the  place  was  just  a  bedlam.  So,  I  looked  for  him  for 
about  a  millisecond,  and  then  I  decided,  "What  the  hell,  it's  every 
man  for  himself,  and  I'm  getting  out  of  here." 

There  were  another  four  or  five  people  in  a  side  drift,  and  they 
escaped  the  blast.  It  went  right  past  them.  After  all  of  this  settled 
down  we  kind  of  found  one  another  in  the  dark  there.  We  finally 
retrieved  this  fellow  by  the  name  of  Wilcox,  and  he  was  out  colder 
than  a  wedge,  at  the  base  of  the  plug.  When  the  blast  door  folded 
over  it  left  a  hole  just  barely  big  enough  for  a  person  to  squeeze 
through.  We  accounted  for  everybody  and  got  them  out.  The 
people  on  the  outside  were  pretty  excited.  They  thought  everybody 
in  that  tunnel  was  dead,  and  that  was  a  pretty  good  presumption  at 
that  time.  So  they  called  the  ambulances  and  doctors,  and  there  was 
a  lot  of  commotion.  It  was  a  very  unique  experience. 

Carothers:  There  was  another  case  where  somebody  turned  on 
the  power  at  the  portal,  and  caused  an  explosion. 

Flangas:  That  was  the  same  incident.  Once  we  got  everybody 
out,  and  things  settled  down,  we  put  a  gate  with  a  four-inch  wire 
mesh  across  the  portal.  We  just  took  some  two  by  fours  and  made 


424 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


a  gate  to  keep  anybody  from  inadvertently  walking  into  the  tunnel. 
Then  somebody  said,  "Well,  let's  turn  on  the  lights  and  see  what  it 
looks  like."  So,  they  turned  on  the  lights,  and  that  was  the  second 
explosion.  I  was  gone  by  then,  but  they  tell  me  that  wooden  gate 
we  put  at  the  portal,  with  a  four-inch  mesh,  sailed  some  three  or  four 
hundred  feet  away.  So,  those  two  incidents  took  place  in  the  same 
tunnel  within  a  couple  of  hours  of  each  other. 

We  learned  a  hard  lesson  there.  As  a  result  of  those  incidents, 
in  a  very  short  time  reentry  became  a  very  formal,  tightly  controlled 
process.  That  was  a  longtime  before  the  rest  of  the  Test  Site  became 
procedurized.  In  fact,  I  think  I'm  the  person  responsible  for 
developing  and  calling  for  the  first  formal  mine  rescue  training.  I 
had  a  vested  interest,  because  I  was  leading  a  lot  of  those  reentry 
teams.  From  there  on  it  became  a  very  sophisticated  process,  and 
it  remains  so  to  this  day.  No  shortcuts,  and  no  hurry  up  and  do 
something  unless  you've  ruled  out  all  the  possibilities.  Subsequent 
to  that  there  has  never  been  another  incident  of  that  type. 

Carothers:  There  had  been,  in  1957,  the  Rainier  shot.  After 
the  moratorium  started  there  was  extensive  reentry  work.  Did  you 
have  anything  have  anything  to  do  with  that  reentry? 

Flangas:  I  had  a  lot  to  do  with  Rainier.  Once  I  came  here  and 
worked  for  a  few  days  at  E  tunnel,  I  was  sent  up  to  take  over  B 
tunnel.  B  tunnel  was  the  one  that  had  the  Rainier  shot,  and  at  that 
time  they  were  making  some  efforts  to  dig  a  little  incline  down 
towards  the  original  ground  zero.  But  Livermore  had  a  couple 
events  that  they  needed  to  fire  prior  to  the  moratorium,  and  there 
was  just  one  hellacious  effort  to  get  them  off. 

After  the  moratorium  started,  and  things  settled  down,  we 
started  mining  back  to  recover  the  initial  ground  zero,  and  we  did. 
The  only  radioactivity  that  couldn't  be  handled  was  just  as  you 
entered  the  cavity,  where  the  melt  was  up  against  the  wall.  What 
we  did  was,  we  just  put  some  lead  plates  up  where  we  crossed  that 
threshold.  Past  that  you  got  into  a  relatively  radioactively  cool  area. 

The  real  problem  on  that  was  the  ground  temperatures  were 
still  in  the  neighborhood  of  1 60  to  1  70  degrees.  We  were  drilling 
and  blasting,  and  the  manufacturer  of  the  dynamite  wouldn't 
guarantee  the  product  beyond  1  80  degrees.  And  we  were  dealing 
with  at  least  160  degrees.  So,  we  would  drill  the  holes  for  the 
dynamite,  then  we  would  cool  them  with  water,  and  then  put  three 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


425 


or  four  people  in  there  loading.  We  could  load  it  out  in  about  one 
minute  flat,  under  the  circumstances,  and  wire  it.  So,  we  felt  fairly 
secure,  even  though  the  manufacturer  would  only  guarantee  the 
dynamite  up  to  1 80  degrees.  We  knew  that  the  manufacturers  give 
themselves  a  little  wiggle  room. 

Every  time  we  exposed  a  fresh  face,  because  there  was  a  lot  of 
humidity  there,  there  was  just  a  tremendous  amount  of  steam,  and 
visibility  was  bad.  And  then  there  was  this  business  of  really  pushing 
on  the  loading  and  shooting.  The  miners  took  all  that  in  good  stride, 
and  we  knew  that  it  was  significant  work.  There  was  always  a  great 
degree  of  excitement  with  this  business,  and  I  guess  that's  what  kept 
us  here.  It  was  a  unique  operation. 

We  did  that  during  those  moratorium  years.  Later  on  it  was 
decided,  I  guess  when  things  began  to  get  shaky  with  the  Soviets,  to 
prepare  a  couple  of  three  test  beds  in  the  event  they  were  needed, 
so  we  dug  a  couple  more  sites  up  there  at  B  tunnel,  and  we  were 
putting  one  down  at  E  tunnel  also.  Then  there  were  three  tunnels, 
called  I,  ],  and  K,  which,  if  I  remember  right,  came  right  after  the 
Russians  broke  the  moratorium.  We  built  up  tremendously  during 
that  period. 

Carothers:  Only  two  of  those  were  used.  That  area  was 
abandoned  after  Platte  and  Des  Moines  vented.  Gene  Pelsor  said, 
"The  reason  they're  behaving  like  that  is  because  the  rocks  are 
different."  Us  somewhat  naive  physics  types  said,  "Rocks?  Differ¬ 
ent?  What's  different  about  a  rock?"  Anyway,  after  Des  Moines 
and  Platt  Livermore  got  a  little  wary  of  the  tunnel  business,  and 
began  to  move  more  and  more  to  drill  holes.  I  think  the  last  tunnel 
shot  they  did  was  Yuba,  in  1  963. 

Flangas:  That's  about  right.  That  was,  again,  up  in  B  tunnel. 

Carothers:  Did  you  do  any  work  on  things  like  Hard  Hat,  or 
Pile  Driver?  They  were  in  granite. 

Flangas:  Yes,  they  were  in  granite.  I  quarterbacked  both  of 
those.  Granite  is  a  much  different  medium  than  tuff.  The  granite 
there  is  about  ten,  twelve,  fourteen  thousand  psi.  It  takes  different 
things  and  ways  to  mine  it.  In  the  tuff  we  were  drilling  with  a  rotary 
drill  with  a  wing  tip  on  it,  and  we  could  drill  out  the  holes  for  the 


426 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


dynamite  in  a  round  in  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes.  In  the  granite  it 
took  a  hour  and  a  half  to  two  hours  to  drill  out  a  round.  Generally 
we  would  drill  ten  foot  holes  and  try  to  pull  nine  feet  a  round. 

There  were  a  number  of  fracture  patterns  there,  and  there  were 
a  couple  of  major  faults  there  too.  But  generally  speaking,  the 
fracture  patterns  were  very  tight,  and  the  material  stood  up  very 
well.  But  there  were  a  series  of  hairline  fractures,  in  a  regular 
sequence. 

Pile  Driver  was  an  extraordinarily  big,  complicated,  expensive 
event.  It  took  some  three,  three  and  a  half  years  to  prepare  and 
execute  that.  There  was  a  shaft,  and  a  drift  at  the  bottom.  I  think 
it  was  Walsh  that  sunk  the  original  shaft  down  to  about  800  feet. 
That  first  event,  Hard  Hat,  took  place  there.  Then  I  wound  up 
making  the  reentry  on  Hard  Hat.  That  was  my  piece  of  that  action. 

Carter  Broyles  was  the  longtime  head  of  the  Sandia  effort  in 
underground  test  and  containment: 

Carothers:  Came  the  moratorium  in  1958  with  the  balloon 
with  the  bomb  hanging  on  it  as  time  ran  out.  What  did  you  do  during 
those  three  years  of  the  moratorium? 

Broyles:  Designed  Marshmallow. 

Carothers:  For  three  years? 

Broyles:  Almost.  We  designed  and  built  it  once,  in  E  tunnel. 
Then  when  we  went  back  to  testing  we  started  all  over  again.  I  did 
a  few  other  things  during  that  time.  I  finished  writing  reports  from 
the  above  ground  tests,  but  I  did  spend  a  lot  of  time  on  Marshmal¬ 
low.  In  fact,  for  the  next  I  don't  know  how  many  years,  along  with 
Wendell  Weart,  who  was  the  Containment  Director  for  DNA  or  its 
predecessors,  I  was  the  Scientific  Director  for  DNA's  effects  tests. 
I  was  the  Scientific  Director  for  Marshmallow,  in  '62,  and  then  for 
Midi  Mist,  in  '67.  That  job  doesn't  exist  at  DNA  now,  but  in  that 
job  I  took  the  overall  responsibility  for  not  only  the  engineering 
design  of  the  tests,  but  for  the  experimental  designs  of  the  tests  as 
well. 

Olen  Nance,  a  consultant,  was  my  containment  expert,  along 
with  Jack  Welch,  for  Marshmallow.  It  was  Olen  who  designed  the 
hook,  the  side  drift,  on  Marshmallow,  which  was  supposed  to  close 
the  tunnel  off  for  sure. 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


427 


Carothers:  That  was  an  experiment  which  was  designed  to  get 
effects  information,  in  an  underground  environment.  Logan  was  the 
first  event  of  that  type,  but  Marshmallow  was  somewhat  different. 
You  must  have  spent  a  lot  of  time  thinking  about  sample  protection. 

Broyles:  We  did.  That  was  really  the  first  horizontal  line-of- 
sight  (HLOS)  containment  design  problem  that  we  faced.  Marsh¬ 
mallow,  in  a  way,  was  the  most  severe  test  we've  ever  had,  because 
it  had  two  line-of-sight  pipes.  One  looked  directly  at  the  bomb,  and 
the  other  looked  into  a  holhraum.  So,  we  were  stemming  and  trying 
to  close  two  pipes,  one  above  the  other,  both  of  which  were  pretty 
good  size. 

The  original  tunnel  stemming  concept  started  out  with  stem¬ 
ming,  then  voids,  then  more  stemming;  the  general  concept  was  to 
be  non-symmetric  to  be  sure  we  didn't  generate  jets,  or  a  continu¬ 
ous  flow  down  the  pipe.  That  design  disappeared,  and  was  replaced 
by  others,  some  of  which  may  or  may  not  have  been  better.  The 
whole  community  was  developing  a  caiculational  capability,  so 
people's  understanding  of  what  you  could  and  couldn't,  and  ought 
and  ought  not  to  do  for  containment  developed  partly  as  people 
developed  the  tools  for  calculating  what  might  be  expected.  Bill 
Grasberger  had  some  input  into  those  calculations,  even  though  he 
was  mainly  the  bomb  designer  for  the  initial  source. 

Olen's  original  idea  was  really  a  follow-on  from  the  buttonhook 
design  of  Rainier,  which  was  designed  to  push  from  the  side  and  slam 
the  tunnel  shut.  His  design  was  a  cheaper,  maybe  more  economical 
way  to  go.  Instead  of  the  buttonhook,  it  was  simply  a  side  drift  at 
an  angle.  It  was  was  designed  to  store  energy,  so  it  was  lined  in 
order  to  slow  down  the  diffusion  of  the  energy,  and  so  produce  a 
stronger  ground  shock.  It  wasn't  very  many  shots  later  when  people 
decided  that  the  hook  wasn't  all  that  useful.  You  could  get  just  as 
much  by  the  ground  shock  squeezing  the  tunnel  down. 

There  were  two  sets  of  doors  on  Marshmallow.  They  were 
simply  big,  steel  doors  mounted  like  the  prow  of  a  ship,  They  were 
covered  with  sheets  of  HE,  and  slammed  shut  as  a  V-shaped  thing. 
They  were  really  debris  stoppers  and  were  not  designed  to  contain 
gases.  That's  what  we  had  on  Marshmallow.  So,  it  was  really  the 
ground  shock  that  did  any  containment  that  occurred. 


428 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Marshmallow,  while  it  didn't  contain  perfectly,  didn't  really 
damage  the  outside  world  very  much,  as  did  some  other  under¬ 
ground  tests.  If  you  go  back  and  look  at  Marshmallow,  it  had 
essentially  every  measurement  of  every  type  we've  ever  done  on  an 
test  with  a  source  like  that,  including  piping  out  a  iine-of-sight,  and 
moving  the  camera  bunker  underground.  We  reentered,  and  the 
cameras  were  recovered.  The  cameras  were  in  a  protected  bunker, 
which  had  a  positive  overpressure  from  tanks  of  nitrogen.  It  was  just 
like  things  we've  been  doing  ever  since.  The  film  was  exposed  to  a 
few  R,  but  it  was  given  special  development,  and  they  actually 
recovered  images. 

Weart:  One  of  the  first  things  I  got  involved  in  when  I  came 
to  Sandia  was  to  reenter  an  event  called  Marshmallow,  which  was  a 
tunnel  shot  that  was  conducted  in  Area  1 6,  in  1  962.  it  was  a  shot 
with  a  long  Iine-of-sight  pipe,  in  a  tunnel.  It  was  conducted  for 
experimental  purposes,  rather  than  for  developing  a  device,  and  was 
considered  to  be  a  relatively  successful  event.  At  that  time  there 
had  been  only  a  small  amount  of  experience  with  tunnel  shots,  and 
particularly  with  pipe  shots  in  a  tunnel. 

Being  a  geologist,  and  with  my  background,  I  provided  the 
technical  direction  for  that  reentry.  People  had  a  desire  to  continue 
this  type  of  testing,  but  they  realized  that  they  understood  very  little 
about  what  phenomena,  what  mechanisms  actually  determined 
whether  or  not  you  could  prevent  the  radioactivity  from  coming 
down  the  tunnel  or  down  the  pipe,  and  out  to  an  area  where  it  would 
cause  you  great  difficulty  with  the  recovery  of  your  experiments. 
So,  they  thought  maybe  we  could  learn  something  by  mining  back 
in  to  the  first  several  hundred  feet  from  the  detonation  point.  We 
wanted  to  see  if  we  could  reconstruct  from  what  we  observed  there 
what  may  have  gone  on.  We  did  develop  some  ideas  and  concepts 
which  were  used  on  subsequent  pipe  shots,  but  we  really  didn't  have 
a  good  understanding.  It  was  all  very  empirical  in  those  days. 

Mostly  the  kind  of  thing  we  did  on  Marshmallow  was  to  collect 
samples  of  the  materia!  we  had  used  to  fill  portions  of  the  tunnel. 
On  that  particular  event  the  stemming  was  just  sandbags,  and  in 
fact,  the  tunnel  wasn't  completely  filled.  There  were  individual 
stemmed  sections  with  long  air  gaps  in  between.  We  took  samples 
from  those  plugs  to  see  to  what  density  they  had  been  compacted 
by  the  ground  shock.  Even  in  the  void  areas,  where  there  was  no 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


429 


stemming,  the  tunnel  was  now  full  of  the  surrounding  tuff,  which 
had  been  injected  into  these  void  regions.  And  it  was  tightly 
compacted,  as  was  the  stemming  material.  To  me  the  most 
impressive  thing  was  to  go  back  in  to  where  the  pipe  had  been,  and 
see  the  complete  and  utter  disruption  of  any  continuity  of  the  pipe. 
There  were  just  massive  pieces  of  steel,  almost  unrecognizable  if  you 
hadn't  known  what  they  were  ahead  of  time. 

As  I  recall,  the  area  of  fairly  intense  radioactivity  was  separated 
from  the  place  where  the  tunnel  was  not  collapsed,  and  was  open, 
by  a  relatively  short  distance.  It  wasn't  a  long  interval;  there  wasn't 
a  massive  plug  of  a  hundred  feet  or  more.  It  was  a  relatively  short 
distance,  and  it  led  one  to  think  that  we  may  have  come  close  to  a 
situation  where  we  wouldn't  have  contained  this  event  very  well  at 
all.  It  pointed  out  that  we  really  ought  to  understand  what  was  going 
on. 


Broyles:  When  Sandia  got  into  the  underground  business  a  few 
years  later,  the  doors  were  recognized  as  one  of  the  big  shortcom¬ 
ings  for  experiment  protection,  because  we  saw  lots  of  projectiles  in 
those  days.  They  would  come  down  the  pipes  and  penetrate  the 
doors.  We  had  a  distribution  on  those  doors;  everything  from 
gaping  holes  down  to  craters  with  embedded  particles.  We  carried 
out  an  extensive  survey,  and  we  talked  to  all  the  astrophysicists  we 
could  find  who  were  experts  on  moon  craters  and  asteroid  impacts, 
trying  to  figure  out  velocities  and  energies,  and  so  on.  We  ended 
up  deciding  we  had  things  from  fractions  of  grams  to  hunks,  flying 
from  very  low  velocities  up  to  ten  or  twenty  kilometers  per  second. 

From  the  things  we  saw,  we  were  satisfied  that  a  lot  of  them, 
probably  not  all  of  them,  were  pieces  of  the  front  end  of  the  pipe, 
or  something  up  quite  close.  It  also  appeared  that  some  of  it, 
probably  not  the  high  velocity  stuff,  was  grout  being  thrown  down 
the  pipe.  Even  in  those  early  days  that  was  recognized  as  very  likely 
the  stuff  coming  later  in  time.  The  early  pieces  were  were  mostly 
from  the  pipe  walls,  or  closures,  or  the  baffles.  Most  of  the  early 
shots  had  baffles,  which  were  somewhat  like  a  collimator,  or  a  heavy 
baffle  that  you  put  in  a  muffler.  They  were  a  four-inch  thick  ring 
that  stuck  three  or  four  inches  into  the  pipe.  After  one  or  two  tries 
it  was  decided  they  kept  the  pipe  open  more  than  they  shut  it  down. 
They  blew  the  pipe  up,  so  it  didn't  get  closed  very  well. 


430 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


All  of  those  things  influenced  people's  thinking  about  what  and 
how  to  design  the  close-in  stemming  to  prevent  not  only  late  time 
leaks  and  containment  failures,  but  to  try  to  minimize  the  early  time 
stuff  that  might  damage  the  experiments. 

There  was  always  an  argument  from  the  very  beginning;  did 
you  do  more  good  by  stopping  the  stuff,  or  by  letting  it  go.  And 
there  were  a  lot  of  arguments  that  went  on  about  whether  you  could 
choose  an  optimum  place  to  put  a  muffler.  If  you  placed  it  in  close 
enough  to  where  the  ground  shock  closed  it,  maybe  you  wouldn't 
interfere  with  the  ground  shock  closing  the  pipe.  But,  if  you  got  it 
in  that  close,  the  cavity  would  expand  and  collapse  it,  and  maybe  it 
wouldn't  matter.  Those  kind  of  arguments  went  on,  and  people  did 
some  crude  calculations.  But  very  quickly  the  community  decided 
that  ground  shock  wasn't  really  the  way  to  guarantee,  for  these 
horizontal  Iine-of-sights,  that  the  world  was  protected.  And  they 
decided  they  needed  more  protection  for  the  experiments  than  just 
the  ground  shock. 

So,  by  the  late  sixties,  on  Cypress,  we  put  in  the  first  double 
sliding  doors.  That  was  a  Sandia  innovation  for  Cypress.  They  slid 
closed  sideways  as  a  backup  to  the  ground  shock  pipe  closure,  but 
they  also  were  put  in  as  an  early  time  protection  against  the  high 
velocity  debris,  to  protect  the  experiments  from  that.  Ail  of  those 
were  originally  designed  simply  as  debris  stoppers.  Later,  people 
thought  they  could  save  money  by  combining  that  with  some  kind 
of  gas  seal. 

As  people  developed  calcuiational  capabilities  and  equations 
of  state  to  try  to  make  intelligent  calculations,  the  spaces  in  the 
tunnel  where  there  was  air  between  the  stemming  regions  were 
replaced  with  some  compressible  solid  material.  If  you  look  at  the 
earlier  shots,  they  would  have  a  hundred  feet  of  this,  then  fifty  feet 
of  air,  then  a  hundred  feet  of  that.  Then  the  air  got  replaced  with 
weak  grout,  with  asymmetrical  voids  on  one  side  of  the  pipe  so  the 
ground  shock  would  shear  things  off  and  close  it  up. 

As  time  went  on,  most  of  the  detailed  worrying  was  really 
about  sample  protection,  because  they  found  protection  for  the 
outside  world  had  been  taken  over  by  the  overburden  plugs.  After 
a  time  everybody  recognized  that  you  could  design  a  plug  that  just 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


431 


by  brute  force  could  contain  a  complete  leak.  1  think  it  was  after 
Camphor  that  DNA  really  went,  in  the  early  seventies,  to  more  or 
less  the  current  designs. 

Carothers:  There  was  a  period  of  a  few  years  when  Sandia 
sponsored  their  own  events  underground;  there  was  Cypress,  and 
then  Camphor? 

Broyles:  Cypress  and  Camphor  were  the  only  two,  in  '69  and 
'7 1 .  Baneberry  was  near  Christmas  1 970,  so  Camphor  got  delayed 
until  June  1971.  It  was  originally  scheduled  for  right  after 
Baneberry.  Those  were  the  only  two  horizontal  line-of-sight  experi¬ 
ments,  in  tunnels,  that  we  did.  Before  that  we  sponsored  a  couple 
of  the  vertical  line-of-sight  shots.  Derringer  was  the  first  one,  and 
that  was,  in  a  way,  a  different  kind  of  thing.  There  was  a  drift  at  the 
bottom  of  the  hole,  where  the  experiments  were,  and  there  was  no 
line-of-sight  to  the  surface. 

I  really  had  nothing  to  do  with  that;  I  was  doing  high  altitude 
work  at  the  time.  Wendell  was  involved  with  the  containment 
design,  and  Bob  Statler,  I  think,  was  the  Test  Director  for  Derringer. 
The  experiments  were  the  exposure  of  components,  and  sub¬ 
systems,  and  the  systems  down  the  line-of-sight.  It  didn't  really 
contain,  in  the  sense  of  protecting  the  experiments;  they  ended  up 
not  being  protected  enough.  Really,  essentially  not  at  all.  But,  the 
emphasis  was  more  on  getting  the  real-time  measurements  out.  If 
we  could  have  recovered  the  samples  it  would  have  been  a  bonus, 
but  that  clearly  wasn't  as  important  as  the  other  measurements. 

Parallel  to  that  there  has  been  the  continued  evolution  of  the 
calculational  capability,  and  as  1  see  it,  more  and  more  willingness 
to  believe  the  calculations  of  the  ground  motion  and  the  ground- 
shock  induced  motion. 

Carothers:  Sandia  was  involved  with  tunnel  events  for  some 
years.  What  was  your  participation  in  that  work? 

Weart:  I  was  involved  as  a  sort  of  containment  design 
consultant  for  DNA  on  many  of  their  shots.  I'm  not  sure  I 
remember  the  exact  sequence  anymore,  but  Gum  Drop  was  a  early 
shot  after  Marshmallow,  and  then  there  were  a  number  of  DNA 
tunnel  shots  with  line-of-sight  pipes.  Sandia  initiated  some  experi¬ 
ments  of  their  own  which  required  line-of-sight  pipes  in  tunnels; 


432  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Cypress,  and  Camphor.  In  addition  to  the  tunnels,  I  worked  on  the 
containment  design  for  some  of  the  vertical  LOS  pipes  like  Diluted 
Waters. 

Carothers:  What  were  the  things  that  you  were  trying  to 
address  on  those  early  effects  shots,  as  part  of  the  containment? 

Weart:  Everyone  was  concerned  about  the  energy  flow  down 
the  pipes,  and  how  to  make  sure  that  did  not  interact  in  such  a  way 
that  it  kept  the  pipe  open,  rather  than  letting  the  ground  shock 
squeeze  the  pipe  closed.  We  did  have  some  codes  that  were  used 
to  do  those  kinds  of  calculations,  but  they  were,  I'm  afraid,  a  fairly 
simplistic  look  at  things.  It  was  as  much  as  anything  a  matter  of 
timing  the  closures,  rather  than  any  sophisticated  effort  to  minimize 
or  mitigate  the  flow.  It  was  a  matter  of  how  quickly  could  you  get 
something  in  the  way. 

We  viewed  it  as  a  three  part  sequence.  Very  close,  within  fifty 
feet  of  the  detonation  point,  we  tried  to  rely  on  the  energy  of  the 
bomb  to  do  the  work  for  us.  Then  a  little  further  out,  but  where  the 
line-of-sight  would  allow  it,  there  were  fast  acting,  high  explosive 
driven  systems.  And  still  further  out,  slower,  larger  aperture 
mechanical  systems,  pneumatically  driven.  We  tried  to  calculate 
the  times  when  significant  energy  pulses  might  arrive  down  the  pipe 
so  we  could  try  to  intercept  them.  The  hope  was  that  we  could,  if 
not  completely  stop  them,  at  least  slow  them  down  until  what  we 
always  regarded  as  the  main  mechanism,  the  ground  shock  itself, 
would  have  a  chance  to  outrace  the  energy  in  the  pipe  and  squeeze 
it  off. 

Carothers:  You  said  that  on  Marshmallow  there  was  sandbag 
stemming.  What  did  you  use  on  Gum  Drop? 

Weart:  I  think  it  was  still  sand.  The  early  shots  all  used 
alternating  sand  plugs.  At  first  we  used  sandbags;  later  we  went  to 
sand  blown  in.  But  this  was  not  continuous  -  -  there  were  voids 
designed  to  be  in  the  stemming.  That  came  out  of  some  early  ideas 
that  Olen  Nance  had.  His  concept  was  to  create  an  interval  where 
the  ground  shock  would  not  be  moving  in  smoothly  and  uniformly 
through  a  sand-stemmed  area.  Rather,  when  it  reached  the  void  in 
the  stemmed  interval  it  would  implode  the  wall,  create  a  lot  of 
turbulence,  and  disrupt  the  pipe  in  a  more  discontinuous  way  than 
the  more  continuous  collapse  in  the  stemmed  areas.  There  were 
observations  in  some  of  the  early  reentries,  like  Marshmallow  and 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


433 


Gum  Drop,  which  seemed  to  support  this;  in  the  areas  where  there 
was  no  stemming  there  was  much  more  complete  disruption  of  the 
line-of-sight  pipes  than  in  areas  where  the  stemming  was  continuous. 
In  the  continuously  stemmed  areas  the  pipe  was  squeezed  more 
uniformly,  which  would  leave  a  tightly  squeezed  mass  of  steel,  but 
with  little  paths  through  which  gases  could  migrate,  and  perhaps 
eventually  erode  the  material  to  make  much  larger  paths. 

And  those  early  designs  seemed  to  work.  Whether  it  was  what 
we  did,  or  just  because  we  were  lucky,  the  early  shots  were 
successful;  if  they  had  been  utter  disasters  we  probably  wouldn't 
have  kept  on  doing  it  that  way.  Logan  worked  well.  Marshmallow 
did  have  a  little  seepage  out,  but  not  a  massive  failure;  the 
experiments  weren't  severely  compromised,  or  anything  like  that, 
and  Gum  Drop,  in  1965,  worked  very  well.  So,  people  thought 
they  knew  all  they  needed  to  know. 

But  it  wasn't  too  long  before  we  found  out  that  even  though 
you  did  things  exactly  the  same  way,  the  results  weren't  always 
exactly  the  same.  We  continued  to  apply  the  same  techniques  we 
had  used  for  closing  the  line-of-sight  pipe  and  for  stemming  the  drift 
itself,  but  as  we  began  to  have  more  and  more  of  these  events,  many 
of  them  were  severe  failures.  High  temperatures  and  intense 
radioactivity  would  get  out  beyond  the  stemmed  area,  beyond  the 
mechanical  seals,  out  to  the  experiments  themselves.  And  occasion¬ 
ally,  even  though  we  would  put  in  things  we  called  gas-seal  doors, 
they  were  circumvented  and  some  radioactivity  was  released  into 
the  atmosphere.  When  these  kind  of  events  started  to  occur,  people 
started  to  wonder,  "If  the  old  techniques  happened  to  work  all  right, 
what  could  be  different?  What  can  we  do  to  maximize  our  chance 
of  success,  since  we  obviously  aren't  optimum." 

Carothers:  One  of  the  things  you  could  have  pointed  out  to 
them,  Wendell,  as  a  geophysicist,  is  that  the  earth  is  not  a  nice, 
homogeneous  medium.  One  place  is  not  like  another  place,  even 
a  rather  close  by  other  place. 

Weart:  That's  right.  And  as  we  went  along,  I  think  that  fact 
took  on  a  great  deal  of  significance  to  us.  We  had  relied  upon  the 
ground  shock  to  provide  closure,  but  we  really  hadn't  tried  to 
optimize  that  ground  shock  by  finding  regions  where  the  seismic 
velocity  would  be  high,  and  where  we  could  maintain  high  pressures 
from  the  ground  shock  out  to  greater  distances.  We  knew  at  that 


434 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


time,  from  a  variety  of  sources,  that  you  do  have  higher  velocities 
in  some  parts  of  the  rocks  than  in  others.  For  instance,  the  addition 
of  moisture  will  change  the  velocity,  and  will  change  the  coupling 
of  the  energy. 

We  knew  that  we  would  like  the  ground  shock  to  eventually 
outdistance  the  energy  within  the  LOS,  and  sometimes  people 
envisioned  the  gaps  in  the  stemming  as  ways  of  dissipating  the 
energy  in  the  LOS,  and  of  slowing  it  down.  Later,  people  built  things 
into  the  LOS,  like  mufflers,  or  enlarged  zones,  to  do  the  same  thing. 
But  the  effort  was  on  trying  to  slow  down  that  energy  in  the  LOS 
rather  than  to  utilize  favorable  geology  to  speed  up  the  ground 
shock. 

Carothers:  We're  talking  about  the  sixties,  or  early  seventies. 
What  tools,  or  techniques  did  you  have  then  to  investigate  geologic, 
or  geophysical  properties?  Were  there  tools  available  if  people  had 
wanted  to  look  at  the  details  of  the  geologic  medium? 

Weart:  Yes.  If  there  had  been  sufficient  impetus  to  do  it,  I 
think  we  could  have,  for  instance,  determined  the  seismic  velocity 
in  the  tuff  in  the  tunnels.  The  tools  were  not  as  easily  applied  as  the 
ones  we  have  today,  but  there  were  techniques  for  doing  it.  Those 
things  weren't  really  applied  to  containment  design  in  the  early  days 
because  we  really  didn't  understand  in  detail  what  was  causing  the 
closure.  Because  we  had  some  early  successes,  we  just  said,  "It's 
working,  so  we  won't  worry  about  it." 

As  time  went  on,  the  experimenters  began  to  impose  greater 
demands.  They  wanted  bigger  apertures,  which  meant  bigger  pipes 
that  took  longer  to  close,  and  were  harder  to  close.  And  they 
wanted  to  move  experiments  in  closer  and  closer.  Sometimes  these 
things  were  in  conflict  with  being  able  to  do  the  things  you'd  really 
like  to  do  to  assure  the  best  prospects  for  containment.  I  think,  in 
fact,  in  talking  about  the  Sandia  events,  Cypress  and  Camphor,  that 
was  one  of  the  biggest  changes  between  those  two  designs.  There 
was  a  much  larger  line-of-sight  pipe  on  Camphor,  and  an  experiment 
station  very  close-in  which  we  tried  to  protect  with  a  massive 
concrete  structure,  to  hold  it  open  for  an  interval.  And  that  interval 
turned  out  to  be  an  important  interval  from  the  standpoint  of 
ground  shock  closure. 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


435 


It  is  interesting  to  compare  Wendell  Weart’s  remarks  about  the 
early  tunnel  shots  -  -  “So,  people  thought  they  knew  all  they  needed 
to  know.  But  it  wasn’t  too  long  before  we  found  out  that  even  though 
you  did  things  exactly  the  same  way,  the  results  weren’t  always 
exactly  the  same.  We  continued  to  apply  the  same  techniques  we 
had  used  for  closing  the  line-of-sight  pipe  and  for  stemming  the  drift 
itself,  but  as  we  began  to  have  more  and  more  of  these  events,  many 
of  them  were  severe  failures.  High  temperatures  and  intense  radio¬ 
activity  would  get  out  beyond  the  stemmed  area,  beyond  the  me¬ 
chanical  seals,  out  to  the  experiments  themselves.”  -  -  with  those  of 
Ed  Peterson  about  events  that  occured  some  two  decades  later. 

Peterson:  It  seems  to  me  that  things  behave  differently  now 
than  they  did  in,  say,  the  Dining  Car  era  in  the  mid-seventies.  There 
are  very  small  changes  in  design,  but  we  have  seen  very  large 
changes  in  performance.  Mighty  Oak  was  the  largest,  and  Misty 
Rain  was  pretty  large.  Huron  Landing  was  somewhat  smaller, 
Miner's  Iron  was  a  little  bit  smaller,  and  so  forth.  Yet  the  design 
changes  were  small.  If  somebody  just  came  up  and  told  me,  "This 
is  how  we're  changing  it,"  I'd  say,  "It's  no  big  deal.  We  only  guessed 
at  the  first  one,  so  how  can  ten  percent  kill  you?" 

But,  it  appears  to,  and  so,  given  the  science  that  we  all  learned 
in  school,  one  has  to  ask  the  question,  "Why?"  and  that  is  very,  very 
difficult  to  answer.  To  me  it  is  as  if  you  plot  something  versus  time, 
and  you  were  going  along  flat,  and  then  you  see  the  curve  continue 
to  rise  as  far  as  things  you  don't  like  to  see.  It  hasn't  been  necessarily 
a  step  change,  as  you  would  see  at  a  disconinuity;  I  think  it  has  been 
a  gradual  change.  But  I  don't  know  why  the  gradual  change 
occurred.  We  were  going  flat  for  so  long.  And  it  isn't  apparent  to 
me  what  changes  occur  with  what  small  design  modifications.  To  go 
to  the  extreme,  you  can  talk  about  the  "tired  mountain,"  which 
would  explain  things  by  saying  that  the  structure  is  just  degenerating 
with  time  because  you've  done  more  and  more  shots.  I  am  not 
convinced  at  all  that  is  what  it  is. 

The  DOD  sponsored  a  variey  of  effects  shots  after  the  morato¬ 
rium,  beginning  with  Hard  Hat  in  1962.  There  were  cratering 
events,  vertical  line-of-sight  shots,  and  Small  Boy,  the  last  atmo¬ 
spheric  detonation  to  be  conducted  at  the  Test  Site.  By  1965  the 
focus  was  more  and  more  on  tunnel  events. 


436 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Flangas:  DNA  came  into  the  picture  in  the  middle  sixties. 
They  came  into  the  picture  with  Hard  Hat.  That  was  theirs.  A  few 
years  later  they  came  up  to  Rainier  and  made  a  reconnaissance.  I 
had  dug  the  original  N  tunnel,  and  I  had  dug  the  original  P  tunnel, 
both  for  Livermore.  And,  both  of  them  were  abandoned.  I  think 
I  dug  N  tunnel  in  about  1963,  and  then  after  I  finished  N  tunnel, 
I  went  to  P  tunnel,  and  took  it  back  about  a  thousand  feet.  Then, 
lo  and  behold,  one  day  they  said,  "We're  not  going  to  use  them." 
So,  we  boarded  them  up,  and  they  were  left  that  way  for  at  least  two 
or  three  years. 

I  think  it  was  about  1 966  that  a  colonel  came  out  looking  for 
either  to  dig  himself  a  tunnel,  or  find  a  tunnel,  and  he  wound  up  in 
contact  with  me.  I  said  to  him,  "I  don't  know  who  owns  this  tunnel, 
but  there  is  a  tunnel  that  has  never  been  used.  It  is  in  a  delightful 
location,  and  it's  a  good  tunnel."  So,  1  took  him  into  N  tunnel.  That 
suited  their  needs,  and  whatever  arrangements  they  made  between 
the  AEC  and  the  Lab,  and  the  DOD  resulted  in  them  taking  that 
over. 


The  first  tunnel  events  in  Rainier  Mesa  were  containment 
failures.  Lacking  the  base  of  scientists  and  engineers  that  existed  at 
Los  Alamos  and  Livermore,  the  DOD  people  doing  the  events  turned 
to  Sandia  and  the  few  contractors  who  could  help  with  the  problems 
of  containment  and  protection  of  the  experiments  placed  in  the 
tunnels. 

LaComb:  At  first  it  was  General  Atomics  people,  and  ulti¬ 
mately  those  people  became  S-Cubed,  who  were  saying  that  there 
should  be  this  particular  kind  of  grout  here,  and  that  one  there.  On 
Door  Mist  (8/31/67),  and  after  Door  Mist,  they  were  asking  for 
very  high  strength  grout,  which  wasn't  a  good  thing  to  do.  Door 
Mist  was  not  real  successful. 

Carothers:  What  led  you  to  focus  on  the  high  strength  grout 
as  the  problem? 

LaComb:  The  reentry  observations  indicated  that,  to  a  degree, 
we  did  have  a  solid  tunnel  plug,  but  the  leak  path  went  out  fourteen 
feet  into  the  tuff,  around  the  plug,  and  back  into  the  tunnel.  We're 
not  sure  what  drove  that,  but  we  felt  we'd  have  been  better  off  if 
we  could  have  kept  it  in  the  tunnel  rather  than  forcing  it  out  of  the 
tunnel. 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


437 


Midi  Mist,  in  June  of  '67,  was  done  with  rock-matching  grout. 
That  is  a  misnomer,  because  that  grout  is  intentionally  designed  not 
to  match  the  rock.  It's  called  rock-matching  grout,  but  we've  set 
criteria  where  it  should  have  a  compressional  velocity  lower  than  the 
tuff,  it  should  have  a  strength  lower  than  the  surrounding  tuff,  and 
it  should  have  a  density  which  matched  the  rock  as  closely  as 
possible,  but  hopefully  not  higher.  What  we  wanted  to  do,  in 
theory,  was  to  make  the  ground  shock  going  out  from  the  zero  room 
go  slower  in  the  tunnel  than  it  was  in  the  rocks,  so  the  shock  was 
driving  in  on  the  tunnel,  and  slamming  the  pipe  in  the  tunnel  closed. 
It's  probably  not  a  bad  theory. 

Carothers:  Dan,  to  what  extent  do  you  get  involved  in 
specifying  the  kinds  of  grouts,  or  over  what  length  there  should  be 
rock  matching  grout,  or  superlean  grout,  or  whatever? 

Patch:  We  like  to  think  we  play  a  fairly  important  role  in  that. 
We  certainly  have  looked  at  the  effects  of  changing  the  lengths  of 
the  grouts,  and  we've  made  recommendations  based  on  what  we've 
seen  in  the  calculations  as  to  whether  a  grout  should  be  stronger  or 
weaker.  We  have  tried  to  work  with  the  folks  at  the  Waterways 
Experiment  Station  as  closely  as  we  can  to  understand  how  they 
formulate  grouts.  We  don't  do  the  formulation  in  the  sense  that  we 
don't  say  how  much  of  what  to  put  into  something,  because  we 
would  be  way  over  our  heads  there.  In  a  way  we  don't  really  work 
directly  with  WES  in  terms  of  formulations.  We'll  talk  to  Byron 
Ristvet,  or  Joe  LaComb,  and  say,  "For  this  kind  of  geometry  we 
think  we  need  a  stronger  grout  in  this  particular  section,  because  it 
will  help  relieve  loads,"  or  whatever  the  criteria  and  reasons  are. 

Then,  it's  been  Joe  primarily  who  has  had  the  most  direct  role 
in  the  grout  formulation  area.  He'll  go  talk  to  the  WES  folks  and  say, 
"These  crazy  calculators  want  something  that  will  do  these  strange 
things.  What  can  you  guys  do?"  They'll  think  about  it,  and  they're 
very,  very  good  at  knowing  how  all  these  ingredients  interact  with 
each  other.  One  of  the  problems  we  do  have  is  that  we're  looking 
at  how  these  materials  respond  at  many  kilobars,  and  the  formula- 
tors  are  civil  engineers  and  concrete  engineers  who  tend  to  think 
about  how  bridges  would  react,  and  what  one  would  do  to  make  a 
pedestal  stronger,  or  whatever.  They  bring  a  much  more  engineer¬ 
ing  structural  point  of  view,  and  we  really  have  to  try  hard  to 
overcome  that  different  point  of  view. 


438 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Each  time  there's  a  presentation  of  a  DNA  shot  at 
the  CEP  it  seems  that  the  boundaries  of  the  different  grouts,  and  the 
placement  of  the  hardware  are  different.  This  run  of  grout  is  a  little 
longer,  but  not  much,  and  that  one  is  a  little  shorter,  but  not  much. 
There  seems  to  be  a  lot  of  fine  tuning. 

Patch:  There  is  a  lot  of  fine-tuning,  and  I  think  there's  two 
reasons  for  that.  One  of  the  things  that's  going  on  there  is  in  some 
sense  operational.  For  instance,  people  may  want  to  put  bulkheads 
at  certain  places,  but  because  the  tunnel  has  some  change  in  it,  it's 
undesirable  to  do  that  from  a  construction  point  of  view.  Things 
tend  to  move  around  for  that  reason.  Again,  folks  may  want  to 
move  something  a  significant  distance,  so  they  will  call  up  and  say, 
"We  were  planning  to  put  the  superlean  out  to  X  range,  but  it  would 
be  really  nice  if  we  could  make  it  five  or  six  feet  longer.  Do  you  think 
this  is  a  problem?"  And  we'II  either  say,  "That  couldn't  possibly 
make  any  difference,"  or  we'II  say,  "Well,  we  don't  know.  We'd 
better  look  at  that,  because  we  think  it's  a  little  long  right  now."  We 
run  into  things  like  that,  where  people  have  wanted  to  make  things 
a  little  longer,  and  we  thought  were  kind  of  on  the  long  side  already, 
or  vice  versa. 

Carothers:  Joe,  what  kind  of  consideration  was  given  to  the 
front  end  of  the  pipe,  where  the  energy  began  to  get  into  the  pipe? 

LaComb:  Actually,  I'm  not  sure  the  front  end  for  Double  Play 
(6/ 1  5/66)  was  ever  calculated,  although  Noyer  kept  wanting  to  go 
back  and  do  it.  I  think  the  General  Atomic  folks  tried  to  calculate 
Door  Mist,  and  Chuck  Dismukes  came  into  the  picture  then.  I  think 
it  was  about  the  Midi  Mist,  Door  Mist  time  frame  that  the  front  end 
calculations  started  coming  in. 

Carothers:  Were  you  putting  overburden  plugs  on  all  of  these 
shots? 

LaComb:  Yes.  In  those  days  it  was  called  a  blast  plug.  I  guess 
there's  a  difference. 

Carothers:  Perhaps  it  represents  your  expectations,  you  might 
say. 

LaComb:  We  were  quite  successful  for  a  little  while.  We  never 
did  really  come  up  with  a  good  explanation  why  we  had  Mint  Leaf 
(5/5/70).  It  was  another  gross  failure,  and  it  had  another  leak  over 
the  top  of  the  far-out  TAPS.  It's  interesting  that  the  cross  sectional 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


439 


area  of  that  path  was  the  same  as  the  one  on  Door  Mist.  That's  why 
Ed  Peterson  uses  eleven  square  feet  when  he  calculates  a  leak  from 
the  cavity. 

Hudson  Moon  (5/26/70)  was  not  as  bad  in  the  tunnel  as 
Double  Play  or  Door  Mist  was.  Door  Mist  was  a  step  beyond  Hudson 
Moon.  Hudson  Moon  had  all  the  lagging  charred,  and  it  didn't  have 
it's  strength,  but  it  was  still  in  place  rather  than  being  completely 
gone.  The  DBS,  the  debris  barrier  system,  which  we  had  added  to 
the  pipe  string  to  be  a  barrier,  did  a  good  job  of  protecting  the 
samples  that  were  in  the  test  chamber.  They  got  more  of  a  soak 
temperature  than  anything  straight  down  the  pipe.  We  were  pretty 
lucky  there,  because  the  leak  path  went  outside  the  pipe.  The  pipe 
was  closed  off  by  the  debris  barrier  system,  so  it  was  kind  of  a  cocoon 
for  the  samples. 

The  Hudson  Moon  rock  samples  had  been  very  soft,  and  they 
had  a  very  high  gas-filled  porosity.  At  the  time  we  tested  them,  we 
said  they'd  sat  at  the  portal  during  an  extremely  cold  spell  and 
they'd  frozen.  So,  we  wrote  the  physical  property  tests  off  because 
the  rocks  had  frozen.  After  the  test,  when  we  went  back  into  the 
tunnel  and  started  to  investigate  it,  we  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
maybe  the  measurements  were  right.  They  might  be  real.  So,  then 
we  went  back  and  started  digging  further  into  the  Door  Mist  physical 
property  data.  We  found  that  there  also  was  a  lot  of  gas-filled  voids 
there.  And  the  longitudinal  velocity  in  both  tunnels  was  low.  Then 
we  started  doing  some  calculations,  and  we  found  there  is  a 
significant  difference  in  the  ground  shock  attenuation  between  one 
percent  and  five  percent  gas-filled  porosity.  So,  we  then  attributed 
the  Hudson  Moon  failure  to  the  gas-filled  porosity. 

Duff:  Bob  Bjork  did  a  series  of  1  -D  calculations  of  ground  shock 
propagation,  and  he  rather  dramatically  showed  the  influence  of  air- 
filled  porosity  on  shock  wave  attenuation.  These  calculations  were 
based  on  naively  simple  material  models,  but  they  showed  us  that 
if  you  compare  the  attenuation  for  one  or  two  percent  air  voids  with 
zero  air  voids,  there  is  quite  a  difference.  If  you  go  to  five  percent 
air  voids,  you  get  a  little  more  attenuation.  If  you  go  to  fifteen 
percent  air  voids,  a  little  more  attenuation.  It's  the  first  few  percent 
that  makes  the  big  difference.  So  in  the  context  of  the  Hudson 
Moon  failure,  we  hypothesized  that  what  we  had  there  was  a 


440 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


relatively  dry  medium,  such  that  the  ground  shock,  which  had  been 
expected  to  squeeze  the  tunnel  and  develop  a  stemming  plug,  simply 
died.  It  got  too  weak  too  soon. 

Then  we  did  a  pair  of  thousand  pound  HE  shots  in  two  media. 
One  was  in  a  fairly  saturated  medium,  and  the  other  was  in  a  fairly 
dry,  Hudson  Moon-type  medium.  And,  indeed,  they  confirmed  the 
validity  of  the  prediction.  That  has  influenced  DNA's  thinking 
about  appropriate  material  properties  ever  since. 

Peterson:  After  the  Hudson  Moon  leak,  one  of  the  things  that 
was  recognized  to  be  different  about  Hudson  Moon  was  that  it  had 
a  high  gas-void  content.  With  a  material  with  a  high  gas-void 
content,  the  ground  shock  damps  out  fairly  quickly,  and  so  one 
doesn't  get  the  closure  that  one  would  expect  for  an  event  in  a  low 
gas-void  material.  So,  this  was  pinpointed  as  one  of  the  reasons  for 
Hudson  Moon. 

And,  this  has  been  the  philosophy  for  a  long  time  -  -  you  do  not 
want  a  high  air-void  material.  Let  me  give  you  two  contrasting 
things,  which  show  why  our  lack  of  understanding  bothers  people 
like  me.  There  are  people  who  say,  and  they  may  be  right,  that  one 
of  the  reasons,  or  at  least  one  of  the  contributors  to  the  Mighty  Oak 
situation  is  that  it  was  shot  in  a  material  with  a  very  low  air-void 
content.  As  a  result,  the  ground  shock  was  too  strong,  and  it  drove 
the  stemming  too  hard.  So,  it  drove  it  right  through  the  closures. 
You  can  keep  going  on  with  happened  from  there. 

If  you  look  at  Mission  Cyber,  the  response  you  saw  was  that  the 
peak  stress  versus  range  was  low.  There's  a  lot  of  evidence  that  it 
didn't  come  from  having  too  low  an  air  void,  but  the  response  on 
Mission  Cyber  was  similar  to  what  you'd  calculate  if  you  just  put  a 
lot  of  airvoid  in  the  material.  It  wasn't  there,  but  the  response  looks 
similar.  And  on  Mission  Cyber  that  worked  great.  It  didn't  crunch 
anything,  and  everything  was  just  perfect.  So  people  say,  "Well, 
you  know,  maybe  some  of  this  air  void  is  really  okay." 

So,  you  can  go  from  the  extreme  of  people  thinking  there  was 
too  much  air  void  to  the  point  where  they  think  there  was  too  little, 
and  and  now  maybe  a  little  bit  more  is  better.  The  history  has  gone 
back  and  forth,  and  I'm  not  sure  what  the  answer  is. 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


441 


LaComb:  Misty  North  (5/2/72)  was  where  we  first  said  we 
would  test  the  overburden  plug,  and  we  said  we  would  pressure  test 
the  gas  seal  door.  That's  where  the  gas  seal  plug  came  into  being, 
We  called  it  the  hasty  plug  for  years,  because  we  couldn't  get  the 
gas  seal  door  to  seal.  The  concrete  had  enough  permeability  that 
there  was  always  a  leak.  Finally  I  said  we'd  put  in  another  plug.  I 
walked  down  the  tunnel,  looking  through  the  lagging,  and  said,  "Put 
it  right  here."  Three  days  and  twenty  hours  later  I  was  watching  the 
concrete  go  into  the  forms.  We  could  have  shot  at  any  time,  because 
the  area  was  so  full  of  people  it  couldn't  have  leaked.  That's  where 
the  first  gas  seal  plug  came  into  being.  We  leak  checked  it,  and  we 
pressurized  between  the  plug  and  the  door. 

It  was  also  the  first  time  we  used  cable  gas  blocks  We  had  a 
block  of  concrete  that  was  the  world's  most  expensive.  There  were 
over  a  thousand  cable  gas  blocks  in  it,  and  the  cost  was  well  over  a 
million  dollars,  and  those  were  big  dollars. 

Carothers:  This  was  the  first  time  you  had  done  cable  gas 
blocks? 

LaComb:  Well,  we'd  been  fooling  around  with  cable  gas 
blocking  for  about  two  years.  We  weren't  very  sophisticated,  but 
we  knew  how  to  do  it  if  we  had  to.  We  didn't  have  to  go  out  and 
start  inventing  the  wheel.  And  we  still  use  the  same  technique 
today.  We  don't  have  quite  as  crude  an  installation,  but  it's  basically 
the  same.  Now  we  use  the  bulkhead  connectors,  but  we  don't  use 
a  board  any  more  because  we  put  them  in  Vistinex.  And  we  angle 
them  so  if  there  is  a  leak  it  will  just  go  out  and  come  up  some 
different  conduit. 

Carothers:  If  you  had  cable  holes  to  the  mesa  surface  you  also 
had  to  think  about  stemming  those,  and  the  cables  in  them  to  keep 
gases  from  getting  out. 

LaComb:  The  cable  holes  were  stemmed,  but  we  never  claimed 
they  were  gas  tight.  We  had  to  go  to  some  extremes  to  take  care 
of  them,  because  we  had  to  do  it  a  little  differently  in  every  tunnel. 
On  N  tunnel  we  put  a  top  hat  on  the  top  of  the  hole,  with  bulkhead 
connectors.  We  squeezed  grout  and  sand  down  in  the  hole  to  get 
rid  of  the  boundary  leaks..  As  I  recall,  in  P  tunnel  we  put  the 
bulkhead  connectors  at  the  bottom  of  the  hole.  In  T  tunnel  we 
blocked  the  cables  coming  out  of  the  downhole  cable  alcove,  and 
put  plugs  in  the  access  drifts  to  the  cable  alcove.  Each  tunnel  was 


442  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

unique  in  its  configuration.  We  could  have  said,  "Well,  we're  just 
going  to  drill  these  holes  out,  clean  them  out,  and  put  in  new  cables 
and  do  it  right."  Or  you  can  try  to  save  your  investment,  which  is 
what  we  did. 

Carothers:  You  obviously  wanted  to  reuse  the  tunnels.  On 
shots  where  you  had  leaks  into  the  tunnel  to  what  extent  could  you 
go  back  and  use  them  again? 

LaComb:  Well,  for  Double  Play,  once  we  ventilated  the  tunnel 
inside  the  gas  seal  plug,  we  really  lost  very  little,  except  inside  the 
overburden  plug.  The  leak  was  minimal.  We  did  have  to  go  through 
and  spray  the  lagging  to  tie  down  the  dust  that  was  generated  when 
the  grout  was  scoured  out.  Other  than  that  we  pretty  much  had  the 
run  of  the  tunnel  within  a  couple  of  months.  Door  Mist,  we  lost 
everything  inside  the  overburden  plug,  but  outside  the  overburden 
plug,  because  the  nature  of  the  leak  was  just  a  seep,  the  tunnel 
cleaned  up  very  well.  And,  so  did  Hudson  Moon.  That  was  the 
advantage  of  having  the  blast  plug  in  the  experimental  drift;  we  were 
attenuating  that  release  up-front,  close-in.  Of  course,  there  we 
were  providing  any  release  with  a  very  small  volume  to  dump  into, 
so  you  could  expect  the  pressures  to  be  high.  On  Hudson  Moon  we 
saw  700  psi  on  the  front  of  the  overburden  plug.  But  at  the  same 
time,  the  advantage  of  that  was  that  it  did  save  the  rest  of  tunnel 
complex. 

On  Mighty  Oak,  where  we  had  the  plugs  way  out,  we  lost  just 
about  all  of  the  T  tunnel  complex.  If  we  ever  reuse  some  of  those 
openings,  it  will  be  a  bunch  of  years.  Outside  the  drift  protection 
plug  though,  we  have  full  use  of  the  tunnel  for  Mission  Ghost, 
Anything  inside  of  there  is  lost.  All  the  Diamond  Skulls  workings, 
the  Mint  Leaf  Workings,  the  Midas  Myth  workings  -  -  all  of  that  is 
lost. 

Carothers:  You  folks  in  DNA  are  have  a  real  need  to  protect 
the  experiments,  and  you've  done  a  lot  of  different  research 
projects.  Have  they  all  been  for  better  ways  to  protect  the 
experiments? 

LaComb:  I  think  you're  oversimplifying  to  a  degree,  because 
one  of  the  drivers  for  our  low  yield  test  program  was  real  estate,  and 
facilities  reuse  for  the  economics.  A  low  yield  test  -  -  two,  or  one 
kilotons,  and  we're  hoping  for  a  half  a  kiloton  -  -  doesn't  have  near 
as  much  ground  shock  associated  with  it.  So  you  spend  a  lot  less 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


443 


dollars  hardening,  a  lot  less  dollars  shock  mounting.  You  use  up,  for 
a  half  kiloton,  compared  to  ten  kilotons,  only  a  fraction  of  the  real 
estate.  Real  estate  in  Rainier  Mesa  is  disappearing,  so  that's  been 
a  big  driver  in  the  development  of  the  low  yield  test  bed.  Of  course, 
the  need  for  the  coupling  experiments,  like  Misty  Echo,  Mill  Yard, 
and  Mini  Jade  ,  and  the  stigma  associated  with  Red  Hot  have  also 
driven  our  program.  We've  got  to  work  the  program  so  we're  able 
somehow  to  do  that  kind  of  test.  So,  a  lot  of  research  has  been 
driven  by  the  need  to  understand  the  phenomenology  of  the  events. 

Carothers:  Bruce,  what  drove  your  line-of-sight  diameters, 
which  affects  the  pipe  taper  and  its  length?  Was  it  the  size  of  the 
hardware  that  people  brought  for  exposure,  or  did  it  happen  the 
other  way;  "We're  going  to  have  a  shot,  it's  going  to  have  an 
exposure  area  this  big,  and  what  have  you  got?" 

Wheeler:  I  think  there  was  some  of  both  in  the  early  seventies. 
Primarily  it  was  driven  by  military  system  requirements,  the  Defense 
Department  stuff.  The  size  of,  and  the  number  of  test  chambers  was 
driven  by  the  number  of  experiments  there  were;  the  need  for 
space.  The  need  for  sheltons  was  the  way  we  quantified  it.  A 
shelton  was  a  calorie  per  square  centimeter,  and  was  a  unit  of  barter. 
Many  times  experiments  were  not  approved  to  be  on  a  test  because 
there  wasn't  any  room.  That  could  be  a  reason,  and  another  reason 
could  be  the  experimenter  hadn't  done  his  homework  well  enough. 
But  space  was  always  at  a  premium.  However  big  the  exposure  space 
was,  it  was  always  fully  subscribed,  as  all  the  DNA  tests  have  been. 
We  used  to  talk  about  having  a  physics  event  about  every  third  or 
fourth  shot  to  let  the  experimental  physicists  and  experimenters 
play  with  it,  and  do  phenomenology,  and  physics. 

Carothers:  They  still  would  have  wanted  a  lot  of  space  on  the 
next  shot. 

Wheeler:  True.  And,  we  never  would  have  gotten  a  shot  like 
that  funded,  because  we  didn't  have  any  system  driving  it. 

Carothers:  Were  you  getting  participation  from  all  three 
services? 

Wheeler:  Pretty  much,  yes.  As  I  recall,  the  Army  participated 
the  least,  probably  because  they  didn't  have  systems  other  than  the 
Spartan  and  the  Sprint.  They  didn't  happen  to  have  a  system  that 
required  that  kind  of  testing.  The  Air  Force  was  always  there  with 


444 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


ICBM  missile  parts  and  materials.  The  Navy  was  there  because  of 
their  Polaris  program,  and  there  was  always  a  lot  of  phenomenology 
and  materials  effects  experiments  by  contractors.  And  of  course 
Sandia,  who  developed  components  for  weapons,  was  a  big  partici¬ 
pant. 

Carothers:  Carl,  you  came  to  DNA  in  1974.  Perhaps  this  was 
an  issue  that  arose  before  you  got  there,  and  had  reached  some 
conclusion.  That  was  the  question  of  what  kind  of  tuff  should  you 
shoot  in.  What  should  the  porosity  be,  for  example.  Also  there  had 
been  a  lot  of  fussing  around  with  various  kinds  of  grouts  such  as 
superlean,  and  rock-matching,  and  so  on. 

Keller:  Yes,  before  I  got  to  DNA  they  had  already  concluded 
that  the  rock  needed  to  be  saturated  to  give  you  the  strongest 
possible  ground  shock  to  the  greatest  range,  and  that  the  stemming 
had  to  be  as  weak  as  necessary  to  allow  closure  of  the  LOS  pipe  as 
far  as  possible.  Now,  those  generalizations  eventually  led  to,  I 
believe,  some  serious  stemming  failures.  It  was  true  that  they  tried 
to  get  the  longest  stemmed  tunnel  by  maximizing  the  ground  shock 
and  minimizing  the  grout  strength. 

The  trouble  with  that  concept  was  that  you  also,  by  reducing 
the  grout  strength,  suffered  a  lot  of  relief  with  grout  extrusion  into 
this  large  pipe  volume.  So,  it  had  no  confining  stress,  and  therefore 
no  strength,  and  it  just  had  a  ballistic  trajectory.  That  was  first 
dramatically  demonstrated  on  Hybia  Fair,  which  was  David  Oakley's 
attempt  to  push  the  state  of  the  art.  They  overshot  quite  a  bit.  That 
was  a  seventy-six  foot  long  LOS  pipe;  it  diverged  to  something  like 
five  feet  at  the  end,  and  there  were  no  closures  in  it.  The  hope  was 
that  there  would  be  a  ground  shock  stemming  closure  of  the  whole 
pipe. 

We  did  a  parameter  study  with  calculationai  models  at  Pac  Tech 
after  that  shot,  and  found  that  there's  a  very  strong  correlation 
between  the  pipe  taper  and  the  amount  of  extrusion  that  you  suffer. 
According  to  the  calculations,  if  you  doubled  the  pipe  taper  you 
started  to  see  a  small  effect.  If  you  went  to  four  times  the  normal 
pipe  taper,  you  had  a  very  dramatic  effect.  At  five  times  the  normal 
pipe  taper  you  just  lost  it  completely.  That  was  a  calculationai 
parameter  study  that  was  done  as  part  of  the  design  of  the  low-yield 
test  concept. 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


445 


Hybla  Fair  was  premature,  and  there  was  talk  about  how  it 
might  have  actually  killed  the  low-yield  test  concept,  because  it  had 
blown  out  so  badly  into  the  tunnel.  But  in  fact,  a  couple  of  years 
thereafter  we  dared  to  offer  to  pursue  that,  and  we  were  allowed  to 
when  funding  was  available.  The  intermediate  tests  were  scaled 
model  tests  done  by  Sandia.  They  put  in  the  low-yield  test  design 
and  the  Hybla  Fair  design  side-by-side,  and  drove  them  with  high 
explosives.  Those  were  scaled  models  which  showed  that  Hybla  Fair 
failed,  but  the  low-yield  test  concept  didn't.  The  low-yield  test 
concept  went  all  that  way,  and  that  was  the  only  test  design  I  know 
of  that  ever  evolved  all  the  way  from  calculations,  up  through  scale- 
model  tests,  finally  to  nuclear  proof-tests,  and  then  to  a  follow-up 
nuclear  test. 

After  the  FAC,  the  Fast  Acting  Closure,  was  developed  by 
Sandia  we  were  sure  we  could  go  to  double  the  normal  pipe  taper 
easily,  because  the  scaled  models  that  were  tested  were  at  that 
taper.  Midnight  Zephyr  tested  out  that  concept,  and  the  proof  of 
that  design  was  Diamond  Ace,  which  had  just  a  short  part  of  the 
pipe.  Diamond  Beech  finally  tested  the  whole  thing.  And  then,  just 
about  at  that  time  Misty  Rain  and  Mighty  Oak  occurred.  The  low- 
yield  test  concept  was  then  the  only  concept  left  in  which  DNA  had 
any  faith.  That  test  concept  has  been  used  many  times  since  then. 
So,  that  was  an  application  of  our  calculational  models,  and  our 
experimental  program,  all  the  way  from  the  smallest  charges  on  up 
through  nuclear  scale. 

The  low-yield  concept  was  designed  from  scratch,  whereas  the 
traditional  LOS  designs  were  developed  in  the  field.  The  early  tests 
had  difficulties,  and  the  designs  evolved  very  timidly.  Of  course, 
they  were  all  tested  on  the  nuclear  scale,  where  you  didn't  dare  fail, 
and  so  the  standard  HLOS  design  came  about  through  timid 
evolution  in  the  field.  And  they  started  long  before  the  calculational 
models  could  treat  the  whole  problem.  Eventually  the  standard 
design,  as  the  product  of  that  timid  evolution,  was  proven  not  to 
have  the  margin  of  safety  that  we'd  become  to  believe. 

Carothers:  Well,  DNA  had  been  pretty  successful  with  those 
line-of-sight  experiments  for  a  few  years.  There  were  a  series  of 
events  where  they  worked. 


446  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Keller:  Yes.  There  were  some  puzzles  as  to  why  the  variations 
occurred  that  did  occur.  It  was  never  clear,  at  that  time,  what  were 
cause  and  effect  situations.  When  we  did  HE  tests  at  Physics 
International  where  we  were  imploding  pipes,  we  found  that  there 
was  a  fairly  strong  variation  in  the  standard  unperturbed  pipe  in 
those  geometries.  You  had  to  have  a  major  reduction  of  the  flow 
in  the  pipe  before  you  could  depend  on  it.  I  believe  the  analogy  with 
the  nuclear  experience  is  valid,  because  there  we  saw  also  variations 
that  we  couldn't  explain. 

In  fact,  there  were  a  few  wagers.  I  remember  that  Dan  Patch 
bet  two  six-packs  that  Diablo  Hawk  would  have  a  much  more  docile 
behavior  than  Mighty  Epic.  Well,  it  shot  out  the  doors  and  Mighty 
Epic  didn't.  It  wasn't  bad  though,  and  it  was  still  well  contained. 
The  next  event  was  Misty  Rain,  and  on  that  one,  because  the  doors 
were  in  closer,  the  pipe  taper  was  larger,  and  there  were  a  few  other 
things  like  that,  Dan  was  sure  that  it  was  going  to  be  a  lot  worse  than 
Diablo  Hawk.  And  he  lost  again,  because  the  doors  held.  Things 
like  that  were  really  puzzling. 

Weart:  In  the  days  when  I  was  involved,  almost  all  of  the 
experiments,  while  they  were  emplaced  underground,  were  re¬ 
corded  on  the  surface,  or  outside  at  the  portal.  But  as  time  went 
on,  more  and  more  of  the  recording  and  the  data  acquisition  began 
to  take  place  within  the  tunnel  itself.  Faster  recording  times  were 
desired,  and  there  were  cost  efficiencies,  and  so  forth.  That  made 
an  even  greater  premium  on  not  letting  any  release  out  into  the  part 
of  the  tunnel  where  the  equipment  was. 

Carothers:  When  did  you  leave  the  containment  business,  and 
go  on  to  other  things? 

Weart:  My  last  involvement  was  probably  in  the  '74,  '75  time 
frame. 

Carothers:  By  then  a  lot  of  things  had  been  done  to  try  to 
insure  that  there  was  no  release  of  radioactive  material.  What 
changes  were  made  after  Baneberry? 

Weart:  Well,  there  were  two  kinds  of  changes.  One  involved 
the  engineered  hardware  -  -  building  more  massive,  faster  acting 
closures,  trying  to  get  things  across  the  line-of-sight  pipe  as  quickly 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes  447 

as  you  could.  Sandia  has  done  a  lot  in  terms  of  building  big,  fast¬ 
acting  closures  for  the  DNA  shots,  for  large  diameter  lines-of-sight. 
They  have  also  done  some  HE  closure  work. 

We  also  did  a  lot  of  work,  along  with  DNA,  in  trying  to  insure 
that  the  last  line  of  defense,  the  overburden  plugs,  the  gas-seal 
doors,  really  would  provide  effective  seals  against  high  temperature 
gases.  We  did  a  lot  of  work  with  Chuck  Gulick,  who  worked  for 
Sandia,  and  we  also  worked  with  Waterways  Experiment  Station  to 
try  and  design  cements  which,  for  instance,  were  expansive,  and 
which  would  form  a  more  positive  seal  against  the  rock.  We  did 
quite  a  lot  of  work  in  that  area. 

The  other  advance  that  I  think  was  made  was  in  being  able  to 
better  understand  and  calculate  the  behavior  of  the  various  interact¬ 
ing  energy  streams,  such  as  the  ground  shock,  and  the  pipe  energy. 
There  was  also  a  major  effort  instrumenting  those  events  to  try  to 
confirm  whether  or  not  our  calculations  were  representing  reality. 

Carothers:  I  think  that's  an  area  where  the  tunnel  events  have 
had  an  advantage,  in  that  there  is  access.  My  impression  is  that  there 
was  always  a  fair  amount  of  instrumentation  in  the  tunnels,  looking 
at  the  tunnel  behavior  and  the  medium  behavior. 

Weart:  There  were  certainly  advantages  in  the  kind  of  things 
you  could  do.  The  geometry  afforded  you  a  way  of  assuring  that  the 
instruments  lasted  long  enugh  to  get  the  data  out,  because  you 
didn't  have  to  be  right  in  the  drill  hole  along  the  line-of-sight  pipe. 
So,  ground  motion  measurements,  free-field  motions,  energy  flow 
down  the  pipe  using  things  like  slifers,  were  much  easier  to  do  in 
tunnel  shots.  We  did  try  to  do  those  things  in  the  vertical  LOS  shots, 
but  it  just  wasn't  as  easy  or  as  certain. 

Smith:  1  had  been  involved  in  the  DNA  shots  to  the  extent  that 
I  would  design  the  stress  gauges  for  Bass,  and  help  field  them.  C. 
Wayne  Cook  did  the  recording  of  the  data,  and  Bass  would  reduce 
the  data.  All  through  those  years  I  had  my  fingers  in  measurements 
on  DNA  shots;  principally  the  free-field  stuff.  Bass  did  the  work  on 
the  pipe,  the  pipe  flow,  and  I  was  never  involved  in  that.  So,  when 
Bass  retired,  and  G  tunnel  closed  I  just  moved  into  the  free-field 
portion  of  his  work,  and  Tom  Bergstress  took  over  the  pipe  flow 
work.  Of  course,  Bass  is  still  the  Grand  Master  of  all  that  sort  of 


448 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


work.  And  so  my  work  for  the  last  few  years  has  been  more  or  less 
on  the  DNA  shots,  the  free-field  measurements  of  stresses  and 
motions. 

The  original  driver  for  that  work  in  the  intermediate  regime 
was,  "What  sort  of  stresses  do  we  have  loading  these  containment 
structures?"  That  has  broadened,  now  that  those  things  are  fairly 
well  known,  into  a  number  of  things.  One  of  them  is  failure 
diagnostics.  In  case  something  happens,  what  measurements  do  we 
have  that  would  let  us  go  back  and  assess  what  actually  happened? 
What  was  the  pressure  and  temperature  in  a  certain  portion  of  the 
pipe  when  the  thing  blew  out? 

The  other  sort  of  measurements  are  for  trying  to  understand 
what  happens  around  the  FAC.  In  other  words,  what  are  the  stresses 
and  pressures  in  front  of  the  FAC,  and  what  is  the  interaction  of  the 
ground  shock  with  the  stemming  and  the  rock  right  around  it.  So, 
the  attempt  is  to  measure  those  things,  and  to  try  to  get  a  good 
enough  understanding  of  them  so  you  get  a  good  feel  for  why  that 
system  works,  and  works  fairly  well,  it's  something  that  has  evolved, 
and  it  now  seems  to  be  a  good  system,  but  the  community  still 
doesn't  think  it  has  a  good  feel  for  what  the  forces  are  that  load  the 
FAC  after  the  bomb  goes. 

DNA  still  has  problems  with  gases  that  come  trickling  out  into 
the  drift  complex;  there  are  late  time  leaks  in  there,  and  they  would 
very  much  like  to  know  how  long  there  are  residual  stresses  loading 
that  portion  of  the  stemming.  So,  it's  the  interaction  of  those  things 
that  some  of  those  measurements  are  used  for  now. 

Carothers:  Wendell,  was  this  type  of  information  useful  to 
you?  Was  there  a  clear  enough  understanding  of  what  was  going  on 
that  you  could  say,  "Look,  see  what's  happening  here?  It  shows  us 
this,  and  so  we  should  make  this  change." 

Weart:  Well,  we  clearly  used  it.  Some  of  it  was  more 
immediately  useful  than  others.  Ground  shock  data,  for  instance, 
was  fairly  easy  to  interpret,  and  it  told  us  about  how  far  out  we  could 
expect  high  enough  stresses  to  really  squeeze  down  LOS  systems, 
and  things  of  that  sort.  And  we  had  shock  velocities,  which  were 
easily  obtained,  and  easily  used.  Energy  in  the  pipe?  Not  quite  as 
easy  to  interpret,  because  of  the  difficulties  of  getting  measure¬ 
ments  that  weren't  ambiguous. 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


449 


The  easiest  measurements  to  get  were  times  of  arrival,  and 
those  you  could  usually  get.  But  the  relative  magnitude  of  those 
energies  in  the  pipe  compared  to  the  ground  shock  energy  was  more 
a  matter  of  an  active  imagination  than  actual  factual  interpretation, 
early  on.  But  it  was  useful.  It  was  useful  in  the  sense  that  we  could 
tell  in  some  pipes  that  the  energy  was  just  far  outdistancing  the 
ground  shock,  and  therefore  we  ought  to  try  and  do  something  to 
slow  it  down,  and  minimize  it.  While  we  couldn't  get  a  good  handle 
on  the  energy  levels,  we  could  get  a  good  handle  on  times  of  arrival, 
and  that  led  to  lots  of  schemes  to  try  and  do  things  within  the  pipe 
structure  itself  to  slow  this  energy  down  ;  things  like  mufflers, 
baffles,  helixes,  and  so  forth. 

Carothers:  You  mentioned  Baneberry  as  the  event  which 
brought  to  everyone's  attention  the  importance  of  the  details  of  the 
geology  around  the  working  point.  But  you  know,  Wendell,  if  I 
wanted  to  be  a  cynic  I  could  say,  "You  guys  didn't  learn  anything 
in  the  six  months  between  Baneberry  and  when  you  started  to  shoot 
tunnel  shots  again,  so  what  was  different?  You  didn't  have  any  new 
knowledge.  All  you  had  was  somebody  pointing  his  finger  at  you 
and  saying,  'You  better  not  !'"  So  what  happened? 

Weart:  Well,  I  think  there  was  a  concerted  effort  on  the  part 
of  DNA  to  locate  their  tunnel  events  in  tuff  which  had  a  high  sonic 
velocity.  And  so  there  was  an  effort  to  select  locations  which  would 
be  on  the  favorable  side  of  that  particular  aspect.  Areas  which 
clearly  had  high  gas-filled  porosity,  which  might  lead  to,  or  at  least 
were  often  associated  with,  lower  velocities  were  avoided.  And 
since  this  had  always  been  one  of  the  factors  that  had  been  primarily 
responsible,  that  was  a  step  in  the  right  direction. 

There  were  changes  in  the  backfill,  things  like  the  specially 
designed  grouts  which  would  transmit  the  shock  well,  but  which  had 
weak  strengths  so  they  would  flow  easily,  and  not  resist  the  closure 
of  the  pipe.  There  were  changes  like  that  which  were  made  in  that 
time  frame,  after  Baneberry.  I  don't  know  that  there  was  any  one 
event  when  all  of  these  things  came  to  be  applied  at  the  same  time. 
It  was  sort  of  an  evolution. 

I  think  it's  clearly  true  that  was  when  the  major  changes  came. 
And  there  were  changes  in  how  the  iine-of-sight  pipe  itself  was 
designed,  but  it  was  never  clear,  at  least  to  me,  what  role  those 
changes  played  in  the  successes. 


450 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Do  you  think  the  better  containment  was  princi¬ 
pally  due  to  the  attention  to  the  geology  and  stemming,  or  do  you 
think  it  was  the  the  fast  closures,  and  the  valves,  and  so  on? 

Weart:  I  tend  to  think  it's  not  the  engineering  features  that 
makes  a  containment  success.  In  my  view,  if  you  need  those  things, 
in  part  you've  really  failed.  They  may  succeed  in  providing 
protection  for  the  experiments,  so  from  the  DNA  standpoint 
they're  essential,  and  I  guess  there  have  been  instances  where  they 
have  made  the  difference  in  a  successful  experiment.  I  really  can't 
judge  what  improvements  in  later  years  have  done;  I'm  just  not 
familiar  with  what  has  gone  on  recently. 

Carothers:  Well,  there  were  changes  that  were  made  following 
Baneberry  that  really  improved  things.  If  you  compare  the  two  or 
three  years  after  Baneberry  with  the  two  or  three  years  before, 
there's  a  striking  difference,  both  in  the  tunnels  and  with  the  events 
in  the  drilled  holes. 

Weart:  Yes,  and  I  think  those  successes  were  probably  not  due, 
in  large  part,  to  the  mechanical  hardware,  from  what  I  can  recall. 
When  you  had  a  success  you  would  go  back  in,  and  you  would  find 
that  significant  amounts  of  radioactivity,  of  molten  material  didn't 
reach  those  features.  If  significant  amounts  of  energy  did  reach  the 
features,  they  often  weren't  successful.  So,  you  really  need  to  do 
your  containment,  and  I  would  say  ninety  percent  of  it,  before  you 
get  to  those  features. 

Carothers:  And  that  you  do  with  the  energy  of  the  device 
itself,  and  to  use  that  energy  properly  you  select  your  geology 
properly. 

Weart:  That's  right. 

Carothers:  Why  didn't  we  understand  that  in  sixties?  Was  it 
that  it  wasn't  important  enough? 

Weart:  I  think  it's  human  nature.  We  had  had  a  couple  of 
successes,  and  so  we  said,  "It's  working,  why  change  anything?  We 
know  enough." 

Carothers:  Well,  you  can  always  blame  it  on  the  management. 
You  might  go  and  say,  "We  really  should  understand  this  better," 
and  get  the  response,  "Why  should  I  spend  money  on  that,  Wendell? 
You're  doing  fine.  Keep  up  the  good  work." 


Tunnels  and  Line-of-Sight  Pipes 


451 


Weart:  Well,  it's  funny.  People  did  continue  to  support 
measurements.  We  always  had  active  measurement  programs  on 
those  tunnel  shots,  even  though  things  seemed  to  have  worked  okay. 
So,  people  were  trying  to  learn  a  little  more.  It  may  have  been  in 
part  fear  that,  because  we  did  understand  so  little,  we  were  reluctant 
to  make  a  change  that  we  thought  might  be  right,  but  maybe  it 
wasn't.  We  didn't  have  the  understanding  to  say  that.  It  looks  so 
obvious  today  to  say  that  yes,  this  is  going  to  have  advantageous 
aspects.  In  those  days  there  were  people  who  probably  argued 
strong  ground  shocks  are  bad.  We  just  had  not  examined  the 
phenomenon  enough  to  have  a  good  enough  understanding  to  take 
a  chance  on  something  that  was  quite  different.  When  it  became 
clear  that  the  old  ways  weren't  good  enough,  then  nobody  minded 
taking  the  chances. 

Carothers:  Byron,  the  DNA,  for  the  last  twenty  or  more  years, 
has  sponsored  a  variety  of  containment  related  experiments,  calcu¬ 
lations,  and  measurements.  More  so,  I  think,  than  either  Los 
Alamos  or  Livermore. 

Ristvet:  Yes.  It  had  to  do  with  there  being  a  different 
philosophy.  The  Labs,  since  they  got  out  of  the  vertical  LOS 
business,  learned  how  to  do  what  they  wanted  to  do  without 
bringing  the  pipe  to  the  surface  And  they  also  turned  over,  in  some 
cases,  the  re-entry  vehicle  testing  they  used  to  do  on  some  of  those 
vertical  shots,  to  DNA.  Their  concerns  were  different,  and  they 
were  much  less  concerned  with  sample  protection.  DNA's  research 
program  has  been  driven  by  experiment  protection  and  equipment 
protection,  and  also  trying  to  preserve  the  tunnel  complex,  because 
that's  a  valuable  resource. 


452 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Pipe  Closure  Hardware 


An  integral  part  of  the  sample  protection  and  containment 
design  of  line-of-sight  pipes  has  been  the  installation  of  various 
massive  pieces  of  hardware,  designed  to  impede  or  stop  the  flow  of 
material  down  the  pipe  after  the  detonation.  Sandia  has  done  exten¬ 
sive  engineering  and  test  work  in  the  development  of  the  various 
closure  devices. 

Wheeler:  The  first  of  what  we  called  an  auxiliary  closure  was 
prototyped  and  built  by  Sandia  for  DNA.  We  called  them  auxiliary 
closures  because  we  took  the  ground  shock  to  be  the  main  pipe 
closure  mechanism. 

That  was  about  1  972,  after  the  DNA  fast-door  blew  up,  and 
didn't  work  when  it  was  tested..  Lockheed  Shipyard,  in  Seattle,  was 
building  a  big  steel  contraption  to  close  off  the  line-of-sight  very 
rapidly.  It  was  a  big  housing  with  two  opposing  doors  on  parallel 
tracks.  They  first  obscured  the  line-of-sight,  and  then  closed  flat 
and  sealed  the  whole  area,  the  whole  aperture.  They  drove  it 
explosively,  to  get  the  closure  time  they  wanted.  I  don't  know 
whether  somebody  miscalculated,  or  whether  they  didn't  under¬ 
stand  what  they  were  using,  but  as  I  recall  they  used  something  in 
excess  of  forty  pounds  of  buils-eye  pistol  powder  to  try  to  close 
these  doors.  When  they  tested  it,  it  wasn't  surrounded  by  concrete, 
or  the  earth,  or  anything  else,  and  it  just  blew  all  to  hell.  That  was 
the  death  of  that  program. 

At  that  time  Sandia  came  along  and  said,  "We  can  provide  you 
with  doors  that  will  do  almost  everything  you  want  done."  And  they 
did.  And  in  a  number  of  ways  Sandia  has  continued  to  be  a  great 
contributor  to  the  horizontal  tests,  particularly  in  the  closure 
mechanisms. 

Carothers:  Did  they  receive  DNA  funds  for  that,  or  was  that 
something  they  did  within  their  own  Laboratory? 

Wheeler:  I  think  the  first  that  was  built  they  did  within  their 
own  Laboratory,  and  they  asked  DNA  if  they  could  install  it  on  the 
event  to  test  it.  That  was  a  significant  thing,  because  it  allowed  us 


454  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

to  get  away  from  the  old  explosively-driven  debris  barrier  system  — 
a  high  explosive  machine  which  created  a  lot  of  shrapnel,  and 
sometimes  tore  up  a  lot  of  the  experiments.  Certainly  the  explosive 
products  didn't  help  the  iine-of-sight  any.  So,  those  fast  gates  were 
a  significant  contribution  that  Sandia  made. 

Broyles:  We  designed  the  basic  concept  of  the  sliding  doors  for 
Cypress,  in  '68,  and  repeated  it  for  Camphor,  and  continued  the 
development  effort  on  those  things  until  the  mid-seventies.  We 
then  concluded  it  wasn't  likely  we  were  going  to  go  back  to  that, 
because  Sandia  wasn't  sponsoring  more  shots.  We  had  essentially 
disbanded  that  group  when  DNA  came,  with  a  letter  from  their  top 
person,  asking  us  to  please  use  our  unique  capabilities  to  support 
their  program.  So,  we  reactivated  the  group,  and  have  been 
essentially  designing  the  hardware  for  DNA  tests  ever  since,  and 
continuing  to  make  improved  versions  of  that  hardware.  Jerry 
Kennedy's  department  has  had  that  responsibility. 

Carothers:  I've  always  thought  those  various  closures  were 
very  impressive  things.  So  much  moves  so  fast. 

Broyles:  Yes.  And  you  should  remember  that  those  designs 
from  the  beginning  were  to  be  debris  stoppers.  Any  absolute  late¬ 
time  containment  of  gases  was  a  benefit.  Somewhere  along  the  way 
somebody  decided  that  instead  of  having  this  big  TAPS  (Tunnel  and 
Pipe  Seal),  which  we  still  have  for  the  DNA  tests,  you  could  save 
money,  millions  of  dollars,  if  you  could  really  make  the  second 
closure  a  gas  seal.  So  that  led  to  redesigning  to  incorporate  a 
positive  gas  seal  in  that  closure.  Several  of  those,  called  the  Gas  Seal 
Auxiliary  Closure,  or  GSAC,  have  been  fielded,  but  they  still 
encounter  new  problems  each  time. 

People  still  don't  have  a  very  scientific  basis  for  what  the 
strength  of  those  sliding  doors  should  be.  Some  number  like  fifteen 
thousand  psi  was  sort  of  the  static  containment  pressure  strength 
that  they  came  up  with.  It  was  more  maybe  from  the  fact  that  that's 
what  you  could  build,  but  you  could  make  some  arguments  that  led 
to  numbers  of  that  order.  The  real  thing  was  to  get  a  lot  of  mass. 

Now  there's  a  big  effort  going  on  to  improve  that  design.  That 
door  is  a  twelve-inch  thick  forging,  hollowed  out  for  weight. 
Essentially  you  have  a  bridge  truss  for  strength,  and  a  certain 


Pipe  Closure  Hardware 


455 


thickness  to  stop  projectiles.  All  of  those  designs  were  still 
envisioned  as  backups  for  the  primary  closure,  which  was  still  to  be 
the  ground  shock. 

On  the  newer  test  designs,  where  instead  of  just  those  fast 
gates,  there  is  the  HE  closure,  the  FAC,  or  Fast  Acting  Closure, 
which  is  a  much  more  substantial  block,  much  closer  in.  I  think  that 
has  much  more  direct  influence  on  the  containment  per  se  than  the 
other  hardware. 

Bass:  I'm  very  proud  of  the  FAC,  because  I  was  one  of  the  two 
designers  of  it.  That  was  a  perfect  marriage  between  experiment 
and  calculation.  I  did  the  theoretical  calculation  work  -  -  the  two 
dimensional  calculations  -  -  on  the  FAC.  At  the  same  time  Paul 
Cooper  did  high  explosive  simulations  at  tenth  scale.  We  operated 
absolutely  separately,  except  we  started  from  the  same  principles, 
and  we  had  certain  ground  rules  to  go  by.  We  compared  our  results 
on  a  Christmas  Eve  afternoon.  We  both  went  home  and  thought  we 
had  a  Christmas  present,  because  they  had  cut  into  the  plug  left  by 
the  latest  simulation  firing,  and  every  single  place  that  the  calcula¬ 
tions  had  predicted  a  failure  in  the  spool,  they  were  shown  in  the 
explosive  test.  You  could  see  every  crack,  every  single  rebound,  any 
spallation  was  duplicated.  Everything  was  exactly  the  same  between 
the  calculations  and  the  experiment.  We  immediately  dropped  scale 
model  testing  and  went  to  full  scale  test.  We  estimated  to  DOE  that 
we  saved  one  to  two  million  dollars  by  this  jump. 

One  thing  it  did  cause  us  to  do  was  to  turn  the  detonation  point 
around  because  we  saw  we  had  a  weak  point.  DNA  wanted  it 
detonated  on  the  working  point  end,  and  we  said,  "No,  because 
you're  putting  a  very  weak  structure  there,  and  you're  spalling 
things  back  at  the  bulkhead  end,  so  where's  the  stopper?"  So  we 
turned  around  and  detonated  on  the  portal  end,  coming  forward, 
and  then  used  that  as  a  basis  to  allow  us  to  make  an  ogive  front  end. 
This  was  all  done  calculationally  and  experimentally  in  parallel,  and 
I  considered  that  my  greatest  triumph  in  calculations.  You  can  do 
marvelous  things  with  hydro  codes  if  you're  lucky. 

Keller:  The  FAC,  the  fast  acting  closure,  the  thirty-inch  HE 
machine,  was  developed  as  part  of  that  low-yield  test  design.  The 
concept  was  that  you  would  not  try  to  close  the  pipe  where  it  was 
so  large,  because  once  you  closed  it,  if  the  grout  didn't  come  to  rest, 
or  wasn't  confined,  it  just  flowed  on  down  the  LOS  pipe  and  you  lost 


456  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

it.  The  concept  was  to  build  the  big  end  of  the  pipe  so  strong  that 
you  couldn't  lose  it  —  a  hardened  pipe  section  is  what  it  was  called. 
And,  near  the  working  point  where  the  pipe  was  small,  you  put  in 
a  relatively  strong  grout  and  swaged  it  with  the  very  high  ground 
shock  that  you  had  that  close-in.  So,  you  developed  a  short,  high 
quality  closure,  that  plugged  the  LOS  pipe  which  closed  in  a 
millisecond.  That  served  as  an  absolute  plug,  so  you  could  not 
extrude  the  grout  through  that  hole.  And  so,  as  long  as  the  HE 
machine  was  closed,  and  the  hardened  pipe  structure  was  intact,  you 
had  a  competent  system. 

Sandia  did  the  scale  model  tests.  We  specified  what  geometry 
we  wanted,  and  they  built  and  fielded  the  scale  model  tests  for  the 
low-yield  test  concept.  They  also  built  our  MAC'S  and  the  FAC 
according  to  our  specifications.  They  did  probably  a  hundred  half¬ 
scale  and  fifth-scale  HE  tests,  during  the  evolution  of  the  FAC.  If 
we'd  had  to  pay  the  full  price  of  those,  at  a  contractor,  it  would  have 
added  a  lot  to  our  budget. 

Carothers:  Dan,  do  you  get  involved  in  location  of  the  big 
mechanical  closures?  Do  you  do  calculations  of  the  stresses  you 
expect  them  to  see? 

Patch:  Oh  yes.  That's  a  very  important  part  of  what  we're 
doing.  In  a  way  that's  almost  the  central  part.  Another  aspect  of 
that  is  we  really  think  a  lot  about  what  an  appropriate  piece  of 
hardware  is,  and  where  should  it  go  in  the  pipe  string.  Sometimes 
we  run  into  a  situation  where  we  really  need  to  have  a  closure,  and 
it's  up  to  us,  working  with  ]oe  LaComb  and  Byron  Ristvet  to  say, 
"This  pipe  string  is  not  going  to  be  safe  unless  we  have  a  closure 
here,  here,  and  here."  If  we  don't  have  a  closure  that  will  fit  at  those 
places,  then  we  either  have  to  take  one  off  the  shelf,  move  it  till  it 
fits,  and  then  see  if  it  can  stand  the  loads  there,  and  it  may  not.  If 
that's  the  case,  then  we  really  try  to  be  closely  involved  in  saying, 
"These  are  the  performance  criteria  that  we  need  for  new  closures." 

We've  talked  with  Sandia  for  many  years  about  their  closure 
design  program.  For  example,  this  Fast  Acting  Closure  that  we  see 
all  the  time  on  the  low  yield  shots;  we  really  were  the  ones  that  said 
such  a  device  was  needed,  and  kind  of  ballparked  what  the  specs 
ought  to  be.  Sandia  folks  thought  about  how  they  would  go  about 
making  such  a  thing,  and  did  the  engineering  analysis,  which  was  a 
substantial  job.  We  did  the  2-D  design  calculations,  so  when  they 


Pipe  Closure  Hardware 


457 


said,  "We  need  a  spool  that's  about  so  thick,"  we  took  a  look  at  their 
design  and  said,  "Yeah,  you're  going  to  have  to  put  so  much  HE  on 
the  outside,  because  it's  going  to  close  on  this  kind  of  a  time  scale." 
They  took  that  information  and  went  to  small  scale,  and  tuned  it  up 
and  made  it  work.  They  carried  the  lion's  share,  but  we  worked  back 
and  forth  interactively  on  what  was  needed,  how  it  worked,  and  how 
to  really  build  the  thing. 

Carothers:  When  they  wanted  bigger  pipe  tapers,  they  had  to 
move  the  hardware  in  closer  because  the  opening  in  the  doors  had 
a  certain  diameter,  and  you  had  to  move  the  system  forward  to 
where  it  fit  the  pipe. 

Patch:  Mechanically,  that's  what  you  have  to  do,  but  if  you  do 
that  the  risk  to  the  hardware  goes  up  almost  exponentially  as  you 
move  in,  depending  on  what  the  threat  is. 

Carothers:  But  they  did  do  that,  because  they  were  going  to 
bigger  pipe  tapers. 

Patch:  They  did  do  that,  but  now  they've  moved  things  back. 
But  it's  different  hardware  too,  with  this  Fast  Acting  Closure 
machine,  which  is  very  different  than  the  gate  closures,  in  some 
respects  at  least.  It  closes  in  a  millisecond,  which  is  a  factor  of  thirty 
times  faster  than  the  gates.  That's  not  so  germane  to  it's  survival, 
but  it's  just  one  big  slug  of  material  that  gets  in  the  way,  as  opposed 
to  the  gates,  which  are  more  of  a  diaphragm  configuration.  Sandia 
has  done  a  lot  of  work  in  the  last  couple  of  years  to  really  bring  up 
the  strength  of  those  gate  doors.  Of  course,  they've  worked  on  that 
for  many,  many  years,  but  I  think  what  they've  done  recently  is 
going  in  the  right  direction. 

Carothers:  It  seems  that  the  hardware  now  is  going  in  the 
direction  of  brute  forcing  the  problem.  They're  trying  to  make  the 
hardware  so  strong  that  it  will  survive  whatever  it  sees,  much  like  the 
overburden  plugs. 

Patch:  Yes.  But  there's  a  lot  of  finesse  that  may  not  be 
obvious,  and  that  comes  in  getting  this  big,  brutal  piece  of  hardware 
in  the  way  without  giving  up  the  timing.  One  can  easily  put  more 
stuff  in  the  way,  but  it's  not  so  easy  to  get  it  in  the  way  on  the  right 
time  scale.  These  machines  are  fairly  sophisticated  in  the  design. 
They're  going  to  the  very  limits  of  the  materials. 


458 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  When  you  talk  about  the  timing,  are  you  talking 
about  the  material  coming  down  the  pipe,  or  are  you  talking  about 
the  collapse  of  the  pipe. 

Patch:  We're  really  talking  about  the  collapse  of  the  pipe.  The 
gates  are  too  slow  to  catch  the  front  end  of  stuff  that  comes  down 
the  pipe.  They  may  be  able  to  catch  the  back  part  of  it.  In  cases 
where  we've  apparently  had  too  much  pipe  flow  you  can  see  it 
interact  with  the  doors,  in  terms  of  slowing  them  down.  So,  they're 
catching  the  back  part  of  the  flow,  and  that's  the  more  threatening 
part,  in  my  mind,  because  it  seems  to  be  more  massive,  more 
capable  of  really  loading  things.  The  first  stuff  that  comes  down  is, 
I  think,  a  pretty  faint  wisp.  It's  very  energetic  material,  but  it's  very 
low  density.  I  suspect  it  dissipates  and  plates  itself  out,  literally, 
inside  the  pipe  as  it  goes  down  the  pipe. 

Kennedy:  The  debris  barrier  system  had  gates  that  set  parallel 
to  the  walls  of  the  pipe,  inside  the  pipe,  so  they  were  curved.  They 
were  explosively  driven  to  close.  They  had  interlocking  fingers,  but 
sometimes  they  just  went  on  through  instead  of  locking.  They 
didn't  work  very  well,  and  sometimes  they  made  shrapnel  that 
damaged  the  experiments.  I'm  not  sure  who  designed  them  — 
whether  it  was  Lockheed,  or  DNA  in  conjunction  with  Lockheed. 

DNA  also  uses  a  closure  that  was  designed  by  Lockheed  that  is 
called  the  TAPS,  the  tunnel  and  pipe  seal,  which  is  supposed  to  be 
a  late  time  gas  seal.  This  is  a  great  big  toilet  seat  cover  like  thing, 
where  the  cover  is  latched  up,  and  at  zero  time  is  dropped  by  gravity 
to  slam  closed.  It's  very  slow;  it  takes  of  the  order  of  a  second  to 
close,  so  any  fast  debris  is  long  gone  before  it  latches.  Sometimes 
it  hasn't  latched  and  sealed  because  some  of  the  debris  which  had 
gotten  there  was  deposited  on  the  seat,  or  it  didn't  fall  all  the  way 
down. 

One  closure  we  developed  and  used  on  Cypress  was  an  HE 
driven  vertical  closure.  The  gate  was  put  up  above  the  line  of  sight. 
Being  that  it  was  explosive  driven,  it  came  down  like  a  guillotine  at 
a  pretty  high  speed,  and  seated  at  the  bottom.  I  don't  remember 
the  exact  closure  time.  We  built  and  tested  that  at  Oak  Ridge.  It 
was  a  huge,  massive  gate.  It  was  an  immense  monster  of  a  thing. 

About  that  time,  the  group  then  working  for  Howard  Viney 
started  designing  these  gates  that  were  driven  horizontally  so  they 
overlaid  each  other.  They  were  fast  acting  gates,  HE  driven.  Then 


Pipe  Closure  Hardware 


459 


they  decided  that  you  could  do  that  more  safely  by  driving  them 
with  high  pressure  gas,  rather  than  HE.  You  could  regulate  the 
pressure,  it  had  lots  of  safety  features,  and  you  didn't  have  to  have 
quantities  of  explosives  around.  That  design  was  all  Sandia's,  and 
we  paid  for  a  lot  of  it  ourselves,  because  it  was  for  our  own  test. 
Camphor.  DNA  was  very  interested  in  those  gates,  and  we  started 
providing  them  for  their  tests  too.  They  started  kicking  in  funding 
to  help  our  level  of  design  effort  for  those  closures. 

Those  gates  have  continued  to  be  developed  to  this  day.  Each 
of  the  doors  in  current  years  is  about  a  foot  thick,  and  weighs  about 
five  thousand  pounds,  even  with  all  of  the  holes  that  are  drilled  in 
them  to  lighten  them  up,  while  you  try  to  maintain  structural 
strength.  These  gates  come  in  various  sizes,  but  they  are  usually 
designed  for  either  a  60  or  72  inch  diameter  pipe.  They  obscure 
the  line  of  sight  in  about  1  7  milliseconds. 

Carothers:  That's  a  thing  that  has  always  impressed  me.  Here 
are  these  big,  massive  pieces  of  hardware,  and  they  work  as  fast  as 
a  camera  shutter. 

Kennedy:  John  Weydert,  who  was  one  of  our  great  designers 
of  these  things  loved  to  say,  "If  you  stood  20  feet  or  so  on  the  other 
side  of  the  door,  and  you  aimed  your  45  at  me  and  pulled  the 
trigger,  and  I  pulled  the  trigger  on  the  doors  at  the  same  time,  I'd 
be  safe."  The  doors  would  close  before  the  bullet  got  there.  And 
he  also  likened  the  problem  of  stopping  them  to  taking  a  Cadillac  at 
a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  an  hour  and  trying  to  stop  it  in  about  six 
inches  without  damaging  it.  Starting  them  was  a  lot  easier  than 
stopping  them,  it  turned  out.  It  was  a  real  problem,  absorbing  all 
that  energy,  and  decelerating  those  things,  and  making  them  stop 
where  you  wanted  them  to  instead  of  either  going  on  to  China,  or 
rebounding.  Either  way  is  bad.  That  was  really  the  hard  part  of  the 
design,  absorbing  that  energy,  and  having  them  stop  in  closed 
position.  So,  1  7  milliseconds  is  when  they  overlap,  and  it's  around 
30  milliseconds  for  a  complete  closure. 

Carothers:  And  you  had  those  on  Camphor? 

Kennedy:  Yes.  That  was  about  the  first  time  they  were  used. 

The  thing  in  the  history  of  the  development  of  the  fast  closures 
that  always  stood  out  to  me  was  the  fact  that  we  did  provide  those 
for  DNA.  They  did  help  fund  them.  We  jointly  funded  a  lot  of  the 


460 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


development  work,  because  we  felt  for  a  long  time  that  we  might  still 
have  a  need  for  them.  But  sometime  after  Camphor,  a  couple  of 
years,  during  the  early  seventies,  was  hard  times  for  the  Laborato¬ 
ries. 

Carothers:  There  were.  We  had  layoffs  in  the  early  seventies. 

Kennedy:  Yes.  So  there  was  a  lot  of  pulling  in  of  the  horns. 
One  of  those  was  to  say,  "Weil,  we're  not  going  to  fund  to  develop 
fast  closures  any  more,  because  we  don't  think  we're  going  to  use 
them  anymore.  If  DNA  wants  to  do  that,  they  ought  to  take  care 
of  it."  We  were  under  contract  with  them  to  provide  some  closures 
through  some  shot  that  I  don't  now  remember.  I  had  the  duty  to 
go  back  East  to  tell  DNA  that  we  were  going  to  get  out  of  this 
business.  We  would  honor  our  commitments  through  this  particular 
event,  and  we  would  see  to  the  fielding  of  that  hardware,  and  so 
forth,  but  we  were  giving  them  this  warning.  In  the  future  they 
would  have  to  see  to  having  that  done  by  somebody  else.  They  said, 
"But  we  want  you  to  do  that.  What  should  we  do  about  that?"  And 
I  said,  "If  I  were  you,  I  would  get  the  highest  person  I  could  get  in 
this  place  to  talk  to  the  highest  person  he  could  talk  to  at  my  place, 
and  tell  him  that  they  would  really  like  for  us  not  to  quit  doing  this 
work,  and  make  the  argument."  And,  in  fact,  that's  exactly  what 
they  did. 

Carothers:  There  were  also  some  things  that  were  used  which 
were  called  HE  machines.  Did  you  people  at  Sandia  do  those 
designs,  and  tests,  also? 

Kennedy:  Yes.  We  early  on  had  so-called  HE  machines.  On 
Camphor  we  called  them  dimple  machines.  They  were  in  on  a  close- 
in  section  of  the  Iine-of-sight.  We  put  like  a  shaped,  or  platter 
charge  on  the  side  wall  of  the  pipe.  We  started  with  one,  and  then 
put  one  at  90  degrees  a  little  further  down,  and  another  one  at  90 
more  degrees,  so  when  they  went  off  they  just  made  the  pipe  go 
criss-cross  to  obstruct  the  line  of  sight.  All  they  were  supposed  to 
do  was  to  make  a  mess,  and  delay  any  hyper-velocity  flow  that  might 
want  to  come  down  there  and  get  the  other  hardware.  They  were 
just  supposed  to  cause  a  delay,  and  a  temporary  obstruction.  It 
wasn't  containment.  Nobody  even  pretended  that  they  thought 
those  things  could  do  that,  but  they  ought  to  slow  down  the  flow. 


460a 


Fast  Acting  Closure  or  FAC. 


Pipe  Closure  Hardware 


461 


In  more  recent  years  there  was  a  concerted  effort  here,  funded 
by  DNA  in  large  part,  to  develop  these  fast  acting  closures  -  -  the 
FAC's.  They  are  a  great  big  spool  of  aluminum  and  lead  and  steel 
which  is  HE  driven.  The  HE  is  carefully  designed  to  close  the  line- 
of-sight  at  the  point  where  it's  about  thirty  inches  in  diameter,  and 
to  close  it  in  about  a  millisecond. 

Carothers:  Basically  it  implodes  the  pipe? 

Kennedy:  Yes,  there  is  a  cylindrical  implosion  of  a  big,  thick- 
walled  section  of  the  pipe.  It  is  not  just  a  standard  section  of  the 
line-of-sight  pipe.  It  is  an  especially  designed  spool  of  aluminum, 
principally,  driven  by  about  four  hundred  pounds  of  high  explo¬ 
sives.  It  implodes  this  spool,  and  causes  a  four  or  five  foot  length 
of  solid  copper  and  aluminum  to  be  in  the  line  of  sight.  It  just  makes 
a  solid  plug. 

Ristvet:  The  various  auxilary  closures  have  evolved  very 
carefully.  They  are  related  to  sample  protection,  and  there's  a  lot 
of  engineering  that  has  gone  into  them.  That's  been  a  unique  thing 
that  Sandia  has  done  for  DNA  over  the  years,  and  done  very  well. 
The  FAC  is  just  an  extension  of  the  Livermore  HE  machine  design, 
but  done  in  a  manner  that  reduced  jetting  significantly,  and 
improved  things  which  the  Livermore  designs  were  not  too  good  at. 
Givingcreditwhere  credit  isdue,  Olden  Burchetand  Harold  Walling 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  crew  at  Sandia  have  been  a  great  group  to  work 
with  over  the  years.  John  Weydert  also  worked  well  with  metallur¬ 
gists,  and  the  explosives  people,  because  they  were  all  in  the  same 
group.  And  Jerry  Kennedy  held  that  group  together  for  years.  It 
was  just  an  excellent  mix  of  people  that  had  a  very  'can  do'  attitude. 
We  would  set  the  criteria,  and  the  basic  criteria  was  to  catch  the  pipe 
flow. 

Incidently,  Sandia  told  Carl  Keller  that  those  doors  wouldn't 
handle  the  stress  loads  from  the  grout  as  you  moved  them  in.  Where 
we  used  to  have  them  on  Diablo  Hawk  and  Mighty  Epic  and  those 
shots  was  really  about  as  close  in  as  you  could  get  and  still  have  only 
a  little  less  than  a  factor  of  one  and  a  half  engineering  design  safety 
in  the  doors.  It's  interesting  that  they  were  able  to  develop  a 
reinforced  door  that  actually  almost  doubled  the  effective  strength 
of  the  doors,  the  flexure  strength.  We  tested  that  on  Distant  Zenith, 
and  it  worked  fine. 


462 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Those  doors  have  been  driven  with  high  pressure 
gas.  I  have  always  thought  that  was  a  dangerous  procedure.  A 
fifteen,  twenty  thousand  psi  gas  system  is  a  scary  thing. 

Ristvet:  What's  really  scary  is  having  a  leak  in  the  system,  and 
not  being  able  to  shut  the  doors. 

I  think  the  highest  pressure  we  ever  used  was  eighteen  thousand 
one  hundred  psi.  We  have  had  very  good  engineering  people  from 
Sandia,  who  were  experts  in  high  pressure  gas  systems.  The  gas 
systems  were  always  assembled  and  tested  beforehand.  The  tunnel 
was  evacuated  for  that  area,  except  for  the  two  Sandia  people  who 
would  test  the  system  after  it  was  installed.  Then,  before  it  was 
pressurized  again  it  would  be  fully  grouted  in.  So,  except  right  at 
the  compressor,  which  was  in  a  secure,  shielded  area,  there  was  no 
potential  for  harm  to  people  except  for  the  two  or  so  that  would  be 
working  right  on  the  system.  That's  the  same  way  you  would  do  a 
high  pressure  experiment  in  the  laboratory.  You  try  to  minimize 
those  dangers,  but  you're  absolutely  correct.  They  are  there. 

Carothers:  Why  didn't  you  drive  the  doors  with  propellents? 

Ristvet:  I  always  wanted  to.  We  have  had  a  program  going  with 
people  in  Olden  Burchett's  group  at  Sandia.  It  turns  out  water-gel 
explosives  work  better  than  propellents.  And  they're  much  more 
reliable  than  gas  systems,  in  a  sense,  and  you  don't  have  the 
exposure  of  people  to  high  pressure  gases  and  things  like  that. 

I  think  if  we  had  some  of  the  explosives  folks  that  we  now  have 
at  Sandia  involved  in  the  early  days  of  development  we  probably 
would  have  used  a  fast  propellent,  or  a  slow  explosive.  I  emphasize 
slow.  You  want  the  generation  of  gas  to  be  a  little  faster  than  a 
propellent,  but  not  as  fast  as  an  RDX  or  PETN  explosive.  There  are 
explosives  that  are  used  for  various  metal-forming  applications  that 
would  be  the  right  mix  to  use.  We  actually  got  as  far  as  doing  scaled 
tests  at  Sandia. 

Carothers:  This  was  going  to  be  on  the  next  shot? 

Ristvet:  Yes,  it  would  have  definitely  been  on  one  door,  on 
Mighty  Uncle. 


Pipe  Closure  Hardware 


463 


Bass:  Now,  there's  a  containment  rule  —  a  sample  protection 
containment  rule.  If  the  doors  hold  for  a  hundred  plus  milliseconds 
you've  got  no  problems.  After  that  it  doesn't  hurt  you  if  they  let 
go. 

Half  the  MAC  doors  have  been  taken  out  in  the  history  of  the 
test  program.  All  of  them  except  Mighty  Oak  and  Misty  Rain  went 
out  close  to  a  hundred  milliseconds.  We  know  that  from  data. 
We've  had  light  beams  going  across  the  pipe,  we've  had  pressure 
gauges  back  there,  and  it's  been  my  job  for  years  to  unsnarl  all  that 
garbage. 

Dan  Patch  has  called  this  flow  of  stemming  that  hits  the  doors 
core  flow,  and  Joe  goes  through  the  ceiling  because  nobody  really 
knows  what  core  flow  is.  This  core  flow  is  tempered  by  the  doors 
lasting  that  long.  Then,  when  it  takes  out  that  door  it  has  lost 
enough  energy  that  by  the  time  it  gets  to  the  GSAC  it  won't  take 
it  out.  The  GSAC  has  approximately  8000  psi  strength.  The  MAC 
had  approximately  10000  psi  strength  —  if  it  closed.  If  it  is  not 
closed,  all  bets  are  off.  Then  it's  just  two  cantilevered  hunks  of  iron. 
It's  got  some  strength,  but  we  can't  even  estimate  what  it  is. 

There  is  a  new  MAC  now,  called  the  STAC,  Stemming  Anchor 
Closure.  It  has  been  developed  as  a  result  of  a  small  working  group 
of  me,  Dan  Patch,  and  Ed  Peterson,  where  we  designed  a  new  closure 
to  prevent  the  Mighty  Oak  problem.  The  main  change  for  this 
closure  is  that  the  doors  have  steel  front  and  back  plates  on  them, 
and  it  can  hold  probably  three  kilobars. 

Carothers:  If  it's  closed. 

Bass:  If  it's  closed.  But  we  can  get  it  closed,  because  we  can 
drive  it  explosively.  There's  no  reason  not  to  drive  that  with 
propellant.  The  MAC  and  GSAC  are  driven  with  helium.  Originally 
they  were  driven  with  nitrogen,  but  they  changed  to  helium  to  get 
more  specific  energy.  But  it  turns  out  that  the  primacord  that  blew 
the  tanks  that  held  the  gas  was  providing  over  half  the  energy.  So 
really,  we  were  ddoing  a  lot  of  the  driving  with  primacord  all  the 
time. 

Carothers:  If  it  were  my  tunnel,  I  would  look  very  dubious  at 
you  coming  in  and  wanting  to  put  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  psi  gas 
bottles  in  there. 


464 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Bass:  It's  the  most  dangerous  part  of  the  test  program.  It's 
much  more  dangerous  than  the  FAC  sitting  there  with  four  hundred 
pounds  or  so  of  TNT  in  it.  We're  going  to  drive  them  explosively 
in  the  future,  and  propellants  are  pretty  safe  to  handle. 

Well,  I  should  say  that  some  work  has  been  done,  but  the  Tiger 
Team  visit  to  Sandia  stopped  this  last  event  from  having  propellant 
drive.  The  laboratories  were  closed,  for  ES&cH  purposes,  or  that 
work  would  have  been  done. 


465 


18 

Pipe  Flow 

With  the  resumption  of  testing  in  1961  some  events  with  a 
horizontal,  and  some  with  a  vertical  line-of-sight  were  conducted, 
principally  for  effects  experiments  of  one  kind  or  another.  Here  the 
need  for  a  calculational  capability  to  design  an  opening  that  would 
allow  the  desired  radiation  to  reach  the  samples  to  be  exposed,  while 
simultaneously  containing  the  radioactive  materials  and  protecting 
the  samples,  quickly  became  apparent. 

Over  the  approximately  eight  years  that  vertical  line-of-sight 
events  were  conducted  before  Baneberry  some  four  out  of  five 
released  activity.  Some  releases  were  small,  and  confined  to  the 
Test  Site;  many  were  detected  off-site. 

Carothers:  Who  designed  the  pipe  string  on  the  Livermore 
vertical  line-of-sight  events?  Who  said  what  the  front-end  should 
be,  or  what  kind  of  closure  hardware  there  should  be? 

Hudson:  I  think  the  design  was  somewhat,  I  shouldn't  say 
happenstance,  but  it  wasn't  engineered  or  designed  on  the  basis  of 
a  lot  of  information.  It  was  more  or  less  a  farmer's  approach  to  a 
problem. 

Carothers:  "Let's  put  a  big  valve  in  about  there." 

Hudson:  That's  right.  "Let's  close  that  pipe  with  high 
explosives."  And  those  ideas  were  good,  but  they  didn't  know 
where  to  put  these  things,  by  and  large.  So  they  decided  putting 
them  in  close  must  be  better  than  farther  away.  "Let's  stop  that 
monster  as  far  down  as  we  can.”  As  a  result,  most  of  the  early 
closures  were  blown  right  out  of  the  pipe,  like  a  bullet  through  a  gun, 
because  they  were  in  a  region  where  the  energy  density  was  too 
great.  As  they  were  moved  farther  away,  they  worked  better.  And 
that's  probably  when  people  realized  that,  "Hey,  maybe  there  is 
enough  of  a  basis  for  science  and  engineering  here  that  we  ought  to 
have  a  containment  group." 


466 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


We've  revisited  those  old  designs  several  times.  1  don't  recall, 
at  the  moment,  what  our  findings  were,  other  than  a  big  recollection 
that  the  primary  problems  of  those  events  was  that  they  tried  to  stop 
things  too  close  to  the  source. 

Keller:  At  Los  Alamos  I  looked  very  hard  at  the  LOS  pipe  flow 
measurements  that  were  available,  and  they  were  terrible  flow 
measurements.  They  put  the  gauges  on  the  pipe,  fired  the  shot,  and 
the  gauges  gave  you  gibberish  or  they  went  off  the  air.  There  was 
no  really  serious  effort  to  measure  flows  in  pipes.  You  would 
discover  after  a  couple  of  efforts,  which  took  a  couple  of  years,  that 
the  gauges  they  were  using  were  heat  sensitive,  and  so  the  declining 
pressures  you  saw  at  strange  times  was  because  you  were  heating  the 
gauge.  And  a  lot  of  the  gauges  were  shock  sensitive,  and  they 
screwed  them  into  the  pipe  wall,  so  when  the  pipe  wall  was  racked 
by  the  ground  shock  it  would  warp  the  gauge  body  and  you'd  get  this 
funny  stuff.  It  was  really  kind  of  discouraging  how  long,  how  very 
long,  it  was  before  pipe  flow  measurements  ever  became  reliable.  It 
was  ten  years  later.  I  think  the  first  really  good  set  of  pipe  flow 
measurements  were  on  Diablo  Hawk,  which  was  in  '78.  Ten  years 
later. 

Carothers:  Did  you  also  do  pipe  flow  calculations? 

Keller:  No.  We  did  do  the  design  of  the  front-end  on  all  the 
Los  Alamos  events.  The  first  ones  were  actually  designed  with  1  - 
D  codes.  I  calculated  lots  of  slices  to  determine  what  the  probable 
2-D  behavior  was.  The  current  design  is  different  in  aspect  ratio, 
and  so  forth,  but  it  was  really  started  about  the  time  of  Door  Mist. 
It  evolved  from  that  point  to  the  larger  reverse  cones,  the  longer, 
more  slender  front-end  cones,  and  things  like  that.  But  it  evolved 
rather  slowly. 

After  I  had  been  at  the  Lab  about  two  years,  Chick  Keller 
joined  up;  that  must  have  been  about  '68  or  so.  Chick's  job  was  to 
do  front-end  calculations  in  two  dimensions,  and  he  came  in  just  as 
eager  as  he  could  be  to  really  do  them  right.  He  calculated  the 
designs  in  two  dimensions,  and  after  a  couple  of  years  he  expressed 
a  lot  of  frustration  because  the  designs  that  were  developed  with  the 
1-D  codes  were  relatively  optimum.  There  was  almost  nothing  he 
could  offer  that  would  be  a  major  improvement.  The  phase  velocity 
and  everything  had  been  determined  with  1  D  slices,  and  so  the  2- 
D  codes  only  confirmed  the  1-D  code  designs. 


Pipe  Flow 


467 


And  the  concept  was  resilient.  Because  of  our  level  of 
ignorance  we  wanted  it  to  be  resilient.  We  didn't  want  it  to  be 
sensitive  to  device  performance  or  anything  else.  There  were  some 
changes  in  things,  but  generally  speaking  it  was  just  a  very  slow 
evolution  of  those  designs.  The  biggest  changes  were  dictated  by 
experimental  conditions  like  the  aperture  that  was  used  on  Cowles. 
It  was  huge  compared  to  the  norm,  so  that  necessitated  a  different 
design,  but  it  was  not  driven  by  any  real  revelation  from  2-D 
calculations. 

In  '69  to  '70  I  was  designing  Manzanas  and  Cowles  and  Yerba 
There  was  also  Snubber  in  there,  and  I  designed  the  front-end  of 
Snubber.  Ajo  was  a  test  for  that  front-end  design,  and  it  worked 
fine.  But  there's  more  to  a  containment  design  than  the  front-end, 
as  we  found  out  on  Snubber,  and  as  DNA  has  found  out  recently. 

Carothers:  In  those  days  it  seemed  as  though  at  every  CEP 
meeting  I  went  to  there  was  an  interminable  series  of  viewgraphs 
made  from  computer  plots,  with  someone  saying,  "Well,  here  you 
have  such  and  such,  and  now  you  see  .  .  ." 

Keller:  Yes,  energy  ahead  of  ground  shock,  and  all  that. 
Marshall  Berman,  Chick  Keller,  Jose  Cortez  -  -  all  those  guys  at  that 
time  were  calculating  front-ends  mightily.  There  were  a  lot  of  front- 
end  calculations.  One  interesting  thing  about  all  those  pipe  flow 
calculations,  and  front-end  calculations,  was  that  there  was  not  a 
realization  in  those  days  that  most  of  the  energy  flowing  up  the  pipe 
was  actually  generated  by  the  ground  shock  collapse  of  the  pipe.  It 
was  thought  that  it  came  through  the  front-end.  You  could 
aggravate  circumstances  by  a  poor  front-end  design,  but  a  good 
design  certainly  never  got  rid  of  the  ground  shock  generation  of 
jetted  material. 

I  went  through  all  of  that  stuff  before  the  CEP  presentation  of 
Huron  King,  more  thoroughly  than  I  had  ever  done  it  before,  and 
I  was  surprised  to  find  that  asymmetric  designs  were  fairly  popular 
in  the  days  of  Eagle,  and  Finfoot,  and  Tee,  and  Backswing  -  -  the 
vertical  line-of-sight  shots.  There  were  a  number  of  things  they  were 
doing  wrong  in  those  days,  and  they  didn't  realize  it.  One  was  that 
they  put  the  HE  machine  three  meters  above  the  saviour. 

Carothers:  What  was  the  saviour? 


468 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Duff:  That  was  an  asymmetric  pipe  closure  system.  It  was  a 
big,  massive  C-shaped  steel  pipe  with  ribs  on  it,  like  gear  teeth,  so 
it  was  non-uniform.  The  fourth  side  was  closed  by  a  relatively  thin, 
flat  plate.  The  idea  was  that  the  flat  plate  would  jam  in  much  faster 
than  the  other  walls  would.  It  was  the  kind  of  thing  which  has  been 
talked  about  subsequently  on  a  number  of  occasions,  but  in  the 
DNA  program  we  use  axially  symmetric  things,  largely  because  we 
can  calculate  them. 

Keller:  I'm  sure  something  they  didn't  appreciate  at  that  time 
was  that  the  source  region  extends  out  as  far  as  the  full  cavity  region 
-  -  out  to  the  six  kilobar  range.  And  so  they  would  put  everything 
in  the  first  third  of  the  source  region  but  nothing  thereafter. 

Harry  Reynolds  wrote  a  paper  on  the  apparent  success  or 
failure  of  HE  machines.  His  conclusion  was  that  you  had  to  be 
outside  of  the  cavity  radius.  He  didn't  know  why  that  had  to  be  the 
range,  but  you  had  to  be  outside  of  the  cavity  range  for  an  HE 
machine  to  be  very  effective.  They  had  placed  the  HE  machines 
from  just  a  few  meters  above  the  can  to  farther  and  farther  out,  and 
they  never  seemed  to  do  much  until  they  got  out  to  a  certain 
distance.  I  read  that  with  amusement,  because  about  a  year  before 
we'd  done  experiments  at  Physics  Internationa!  which  showed  that 
the  ground  shock  implosion  of  the  pipe  generated  a  magnificent  jet 
when  you  were  in  the  six  kilobar  range.  That  happens  to  be  a  little 
bit  beyond  the  cavity  radius.  And  so  this  paper  that  was  written  by 
Harry  Reynolds  had  all  this  wisdom  in  it,  which  was  supported  later 
on  when  we  discovered  what  was  really  going  on.  His  conclusions 
were  right,  but  he  was  a  bit  baffled  by  why  they  were  true. 

And  there  was  an  external  helix  on  one  of  the  Livermore 
events,  but  I  didn't  know  that.  I  also  had  put  a  helix  on  the  outside 
of  the  pipe  on  Cowles.  Now  I  know  that  the  external  helix  on  Cowles 
was  ineffective.  I'm  sure  of  that,  because  when  I  went  to  DNA  we 
started  doing  experiments  of  that  kind.  Those  tests  we  later  did  at 
Physics  International  showed  that  an  external  helix  worked  fine  for 
an  HE  imploded  pipe,  but  it  didn't  work  at  ail  for  a  ground  shock 
imploded  pipe.  There  was  absolutely  no  effect  from  some  of  the 
strongest  asymmetries  on  the  outside  of  the  pipe. 


Pipe  Flow 


469 


Duff:  Probably  the  most  relevant  thing  that  I  did  of  a 
containment  nature  while  I  was  at  Livermore  was  on  Alva  and 
Backswing,  where  we  diagnosed  the  performance  of  the  front-end 
hardware.  That's  something  that  hasn't  been  done  since.  Interest¬ 
ingly  enough,  we  got  an  indication  of  the  pressure  in  the  iron  of  the 
saviour,  and  it  was  somewhere  between  1 00  and  500  kiiobars.  We 
could  tell  by  the  velocity  of  the  shock  wave  that  was  involved.  And 
the  velocity  of  the  jet  coming  up  the  pipe  was  two  centimeters  per 
microsecond  in  the  closure  itself,  and  that  number  is  the  same  as 
DNA  is  getting  these  days. 

The  first  events  to  use  a  horizontal  line-of-sight  in  tunnels  for 
weapons  effects  studies  were  Logan  (1958),  Marshmallow  (1962), 
and  Gumdrop  (1965).  It  was  in  1966  that  the  DNA  began  an 
extensive  series  of  effects  shots  in  tunnels  in  Rainier  Mesa.  Most 
of  these  used  a  horizontal  vacuum  pipe  that  diverged  from  a  few 
inches  in  diameter  near  the  device  to  several  feet  in  diameter  at  the 
far  end,  which  might  be  as  much  as  a  thousand  feet  away  from  the 
source.  Stations  for  various  exposures  levels  and  experiments  could 
be  located  along  the  pipe.  Some  experiments  recorded  data  as  the 
radiation  from  the  device  struck  the  detectors,  and  were  finished 
within  microseconds.  Others  involved  the  reentry  and  recovery  of 
exposed  samples  and  components,  and  their  success  depended  on 
being  protected  from  ground  shock,  damage  by  projectiles,  high 
pressures  and  temperatures,  and  contamination  by  device  debris. 

The  design  of  the  line-of-sight  system  thus  involves  letting  the 
prompt  radiation  from  the  device  into  the  pipe,  and  then  closing  it 
in  such  a  way  that  other  material  does  not  flow  down  the  pipe  and 
damage  or  destroy  the  experiments  being  done.  Further,  the  tunnel 
complex  should  be  protected,  principally  from  radioactive  contami¬ 
nation,  so  it  can  be  used  for  future  experiments.  And,  extensive 
amounts  of  recording  instrumentation  and  equipment,  whose  loss 
would  be  quite  costly,  are  usually  located  in  the  tunnel.  Finally, 
there  is  to  be  no  release  of  radioactive  material  to  the  atmosphere. 
The  proper  design  of  the  line-of-sight  system  is  crucial  to  the 
accomplishment  of  all  these  purposes,  except  possibly  the  last.  It 
has  been  demonstrated  that  massive  concrete  plugs  placed  in  the 
tunnel  can,  if  properly  designed  and  installed,  prevent  release  of 
radioactive  gases  even  if  there  is  direct  and  open  communication 
between  the  cavity  and  the  tunnel  complex. 


470 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


The  first  design  problem  is  to  allow  the  prompt  radiation  from 
the  device  to  enter  the  pipe,  and  then  to  close  the  close-in  portion  of 
the  pipe,  called  the  front-end,  to  prevent  device  debris  from  enter¬ 
ing. 

Carothers:  Chuck,  might  it  be  fair  to  say  the  way  front-ends 
are  today  is  largely  due  to  you? 

Dismukes:  Well,  front-end  design  has  been  my  primary 
occupation  since  about  1  965,  but  1  think  that  would  be  giving  me 
a  little  too  much  credit.  Of  course,  we  have  to  take  the  blame  when 
they  don't  work;  they're  not  ail  successes.  If  I'm  going  to  take  some 
of  the  blame,  I  certainly  want  some  of  the  credit  for  the  ones  that 
worked. 

Carothers:  Seems  fair. 

Dismukes:  We  haven't  been  totally  successful.  And,  that's  a 
major  question;  when  things  don't  work  right,  what  went  wrong? 
That's  something  I  don't  think  we  know  the  answer  to. 

Carothers:  When  you  talk  about  front-ends,  how  far  along  the 
pipe  does  the  front-end  extend?  When  does  it  stop  being  the  front- 
end? 

Dismukes:  That  is  also  an  issue,  and  it  has  varied  over  the  years. 
It  was  often  a  time  frame  of  a  hundred  microseconds  or  so  where  we 
would  try  to  describe  the  phenomena.  At  that  point  the  shock  might 
have  propagated  on  the  order  of  a  meter  outside  the  zero  room  into 
the  stemming.  As  the  designs  evolved  we  came  up  with  this 
thickened  pipe  wall,  a  heavy-walled  pipe  which  is  sometimes  called 
a  reverse  cone,  or  extension.  That's  grown  in  length  over  the  years, 
and  now  it's  out  to  a  few  meters.  We  try  to  carry  the  calculations 
and  analysis  out  to  where  the  shock  has  reached  that  range,  or 
beyond.  Typically  we've  looked  out  to  half  a  millisecond  to  a 
millisecond. 

Carothers:  What  factors  do  you  try  to  include,  and  what  do 
you  try  to  do  out  to  that  half  millisecond  or  so? 

Dismukes:  The  basic  concept  is  simple.  We're  talking  about 
line-of-sight  events,  primarily  for  x-ray  experiments,  but  they  don't 
have  to  be.  We're  viewing  a  portion  of  the  output  of  the  device 
through  a  small  pipe.  We  want  to  maintain  this  view  until  the  device 
has  put  out  its  prompt  radiation,  and  it  has  had  time  to  go  through 


Pipe  Flow 


471 


the  system.  That's  typically  ten  nanoseconds  or  less.  It's  very 
quick,  so  we  don't  need  the  pipe  to  stay  open  very  long.  Then,  at 
that  point  we  want  to  close  that  pipe  as  rapidly  as  possible,  to 
prevent  device  debris  and  radiation  we  aren't  interested  in  from 
coming  down  the  pipe. 

The  basic  concept  is  to  create  a  a  sequential  set  of  valves,  or 
closures.  In  order  to  close  things  fast  you  have  to  vaporize  them, 
get  them  very  hot.  And  they  won't  stay  around  forever  because 
they're  basically  just  a  dense  gas.  So,  we  try  to  follow  that  with  a 
little  denser  gas,  and  a  little  denser,  and  eventually  some  liquid,  and 
eventually  solid  material  which  we  hope  will  survive  and  begin  to 
form  the  permanent  closure  of  the  pipe.  The  whole  system  is 
designed  to  produce  a  continuous,  but  only  semipermanent  closure 
of  gradually  increasing  integrity.  It's  length  times  density,  and  the 
cooler  the  better,  but  it's  hard  to  get  material  in  quickly  and  keep 
it  cool.  Most  of  our  systems,  at  least  the  way  we  calculate  them, 
come  apart  after  we've  closed  them,  but  over  a  long  period  of  time. 
By  then  we  hope  to  have  created  the  ground  shock  closure  of  the 
pipe  further  out. 

Carothers:  What's  the  purpose  of  this  reverse  cone  that  wasn't 
there  originally,  then  gradually  got  there,  and  got  longer,  and  as  I 
recall  changed  material  a  couple  of  times? 

Dismukes:  In  the  early  days  we  essentially  just  had  a  pipe 
sticking  into  a  box  and  we  worried  about  getting  the  front  of  that 
pipe  closed.  There  was  stemming  basically  up  to  what  we  call  the 
portal  end  of  the  box,  and  the  pipe  was  just  there.  We  noticed  that 
when  the  shock  propagated  into  the  medium,  the  stemming  tended 
to  provide  a  low  density  path  between  the  hot  zero  room  and  the 
pipe.  The  place  where  we  were  trying  to  form  a  plug  in  the  pipe  was 
just  very  hot,  and  of  a  low  density.  Because  the  shock  was  strong 
and  the  stemming  was  of  insufficient  density  to  really  resist  it,  we 
might  have  a  good  plug  at  the  front  of  the  pipe,  but  this  could  be 
bypassed,  leaving  the  remaining  pipe  open,  potentially,  to  the  zero 
room. 

Carothers:  The  pipe  was  being  closed  basically  with  the  pipe 
material  and  some  grout? 

Dismukes:  Even  worse,  in  the  process  of  closing  components 
closer  to  the  bomb  we  were  producing  a  fair  amount  of  energetic 
flow,  which  we  call  plasma,  which  was  jetting  up  the  pipe.  This  stuff 


472 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


was  interacting  with  the  pipe  before  the  ground  shock  got  there,  and 
blowing  it  out  significantly.  So,  it  was  a  lot  larger  when  the  ground 
shock  did  arrive,  and  that  made  it  harder  to  close.  That  whole 
process  led  to  some  very  tenuous  looking  curtains  of  material 
between  the  open  LOS  and  the  hot  zero  room.  We  noticed  right 
away  that  we  ought  to  try  to  do  something  about  that.  Initially  we 
just  put  in  a  couple  of  feet  of  thick-walled  iron  pipe.  That  helped, 
so  we  decided  to  make  it  longer,  because  we  noticed  that  just 
beyond  the  end  of  that  thick  walled  section,  again  the  pipe  was 
exploding. 

The  impedance  of  the  metal  was  enough  to  inhibit  the  explo¬ 
sion  of  the  pipe,  so  it  didn't  get  as  large  before  the  ground  shock 
arrived.  That's  the  basic  concept.  Also,  when  you  do  close  it,  the 
material  comes  in  more  gently  because  of  its  higher  density.  So,  it 
doesn't  get  as  hot,  and  it  doesn't  produce  as  much  of  a  problem 
downstream.  We  started  doing  a  lot  of  numerical  experiments  on 
the  computer,  and  we  noticed  that  higher  density  was  better.  And 
what's  the  highest  density  around?  Uranium,  or  something  like 
that,  and  there  was  lots  of  that  stuff  available.  Now,  it  took  a 
number  of  years  to  reach  that  state.  We  went  to  ten  foot  long 
reverse  cones  of  steel  and  we  used  those  for  quite  a  time. 

Carothers:  Wasn't  there  a  time  when  they  were  lead? 

Dismukes:  No,  they  have  never  been  lead.  We  talked  about 
that,  and  we  were  a  little  nervous  about  lead.  It  has  such  a  low  heat 
of  melt  we  were  worried  about  squirting  a  lot  of  lead  up  the  pipe. 
And,  the  density  isn't  that  much  higher  than  steel,  so  it  wouldn't  be 
a  big  difference. 

Somewhere  along  there,  say  1975,  we  started  experimenting 
with  really  high  density,  on  the  computer.  Uranium  was  much  more 
beneficial.  The  energy  in  the  pipe  wasn't  sufficient  to  open  the  pipe 
up.  And  when  the  ground  shock  pushed  it  back  in  it  was  relatively 
cool. 

Carothers:  Let  me  see  if  I  have  the  concept.  The  uranium  is 
sitting  here.  The  material  that  starts  coming  from  the  zero  room 
heats  it  very  rapidly  and  starts  to  push  it  out.  You  would  like  it  to 
just  sit  there  until  the  ground  shock  gets  there  and  starts  to  move 
it  in. 


472a 


q  zlp 


Pipe  Flow 


473 


Dismukes:  Right.  And,  the  stuff  in  the  pipe  that  gets  there 
doesn't  have  a  high  Mach  number.  In  other  words,  there's  a  lot  of 
thermal  energy  as  well  as  kinetic  energy.  So,  it  creates  at  least  many 
tens  of  kilobars  of  pressure  in  there.  That's  enough  to  start  trying 
to  make  the  pipe  bigger;  to  push  the  pipe  out  before  the  ground 
shock  has  really  had  time  to  get  there.  The  ground  shock  at  first  tries 
to  stop  it  from  moving  out,  and  then  it  tries  to  push  it  back  in.  Of 
course,  the  bigger  the  pipe  has  become,  and  the  more  energy  there 
is  in  it,  the  more  work  the  ground  shock  does  on  it,  and  adds  even 
more  energy  which,  potentially,  can  go  up  the  pipe. 

Now,  that's  one  thing  everybody  always  assumes  is  bad  for 
containment.  It  might  not  be.  Letting  all  that  energy  go  up  the  pipe 
doesn't  necessarily  cause  a  problem,  except  it  can  sure  attack  other 
things  like  the  mechanical  closures.  In  principle  it  could  even  get 
to  the  experiment  station  and  do  damage  to  the  experiments.  But 
if  we've  done  our  job  there  won't  be  device  debris  in  it,  and  so  it's 
not  radioactive.  So,  if  we  could  let  all  this  fast  stuff  go  roaring  up 
the  pipe  and  just  got  lost,  and  out  of  the  way,  maybe  we  could  close 
the  pipe  even  better. 

Carothers:  You  are  recapitulating  a  line  of  thought  that 
occurred  in  Livermore  following  the  event  called  Eagle.  It  was  the 
one  that  produced  a  fireball  at  the  surface.  We  were  a  little 
surprised  to  see  that. 

Dismukes:  I’ll  bet. 

Carothers:  I  had  people  who  did  things  like  fireball  yields,  and 
I  said,  "How  much  energy  was  there?"  They  came  up  with  a  number 
which  was  kind  of  off  the  wall,  not  applying  fireball  yield  rules,  of 
course,  but  HE  fireballs,  you  might  say.  They  said,  "About  two 
hundred  pounds." 

Dismukes:  I  would  have  guessed  it  might  have  been  a  few  tons. 
Either  way,  it's  not  really  very  much  energy,  but  it  looked  spectacu¬ 
lar.  You  wouldn't  want  to  be  standing  there. 

Carothers:  No.  It  sure  blew  up  the  tower  that  had  the 
instruments  on  it.  Anyway,  "Bang."  There  was  the  fireball,  and  all 
these  pieces  of  the  tower  flying  around.  Then  there  was  a  quiescent 
period.  Not  very  long.  Maybe  a  couple  of  seconds.  Up  to  that 
point  there  was  no  radioactivity. 


474 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Dismukes:  That  fireball  wasn't  radioactive?  It  was  just  some 
hot  gas? 

Carothers:  Yes.  Following  that,  after  this  short  period,  there 
was  Steam  or  smoke,  and  it  was  quite  radioactive.  And  so,  doing  the 
kind  of  deep  thinking  that  we  used  to  do  in  those  days  we  said, 
"Well,  there  wasn't  any  activity  there  in  the  beginning.  Why  don't 
we  just  let  that  go  by.  Then,  if  we  had  some  big  valves,  and  if  we 
could  close  them  in  half  a  second,  or  a  second,  we  could  just  shut 
it  off."  That's  where  ball  valves  on  the  vertical  Iine-of-sight  pipe  got 
invented.  Of  course,  we  discovered  they  could  be  taken  out  one 
way  or  another,  but  that's  another  story.  But  that's  what  you 
reminded  me  of  when  you  said,  "Maybe  it's  good  to  let  this  go  by; 
it's  not  radioactive.  Then  we  will  close  things  off." 

Dismukes:  It's  not  guaranteed  to  be  bad  for  containment  per 
se. 

Carothers:  No,  but  DNA  has  always  had  two  problems.  The 
more  severe  one  is  to  preserve  the  experiments,  to  protect  the 
samples.  I  think  of  the  tower  on  Eagle  when  you  say,  "Let  it  go  by." 
As  far  as  the  problem  of  a  release  to  the  atmosphere  goes,  if  you 
folks  succeed  in  protecting  the  experiments,  containment  is  virtu¬ 
ally  assured. 

Dismukes:  That's  almost  axiomatic,  you  would  think.  But  I 
don't  know  i^ that  is  really  true.  And  that's  because  we've  had  some 
strange  results  where  things  looked  good  for  awhile,  and  then  later 
they  didn't. 

Carothers:  Anyway,  you  now  have  put  a  lot  of  high-Z,  high- 
density  stuff  around  the  pipe,  and  hopefully  it  stays  relatively  cool. 

Dismukes:  Right.  And  so  we're  really  accomplishing  two 
things.  We're  keeping  the  pipe,  wjiich  we  have  to  close  later,  from 
expanding.  And  we're  also  putting  somewhat  cooler,  higher  density 
material  into  the  pipe.  The  problem  is  that  if  you  make  this  reverse 
cone  longer,  you  have  to  run  the  calculations  longer  in  time  to  see 
what  happens  after  you  get  to  the  end  of  it,  and  we  haven't  explored 
that  region  enough. 

Carothers:  Computers  are  getting  faster. 


Pipe  Flow 


475 


Dismukes:  Yes.  But  the  modeling  issues  are  significant.  Where 
we  think  the  real  problems  are  is  later  in  time  than  where  we're  now 
talking  about.  It's  in  the  few  milliseconds  regime  where  no  one  is 
really  dealing  with  what  appears  to  me  to  be  the  most  likely  source 
of  containment  problems. 

Carothers:  What  do  you  think  that  source  is? 

Dismukes:  It's  that  we  still  have  gas,  a  lot  of  hot  gas,  in  the 
pipe,  which  is  trying  to  expand  the  pipe,  and  we  have  the  ground 
shock  coming  along.  The  interaction  of  those,  and  treating  the  flow 
in  the  pipe,  modeling  it  well,  is  difficult.  We  don't  know  how  to  do 
that  right  now.  That  area  is  the  one  that  looks  to  us  like  the  biggest 
problem  --  the  influence  of  the  pipe  flow  on  the  ground  shock  and 
the  stemming  plug  formation. 

We  ran  a  calculation,  one  we  know  isn't  a  good  calculation,  out 
to  ten  milliseconds  on  one  of  our  standard  designs,  and  things  didn't 
happen  the  way  we  expected.  We  were  kind  of  shocked.  We  didn't 
form  a  good  plug  after  we  got  past  the  end  of  the  reverse  cone,  or 
extension.  There  was  quite  a  long  period  where  we  had  very  little 
material  in  the  pipe.  And  then  finally  a  plug  started  to  form.  We 
knew  that  we  weren't  treating  the  physics  very  well,  but  that  was 
scary. 

And  some  of  our  reentry  observations  are  scary.  We  see 
occasionally,  "core  flow."  ]oe  hates  the  words,  but  that's  what  I 
want  to  call  it.  That's  where,  when  you  mine  back  in,  down  the  main 
drift,  you  see  a  well  defined  stream  of  grout  which  you  can  identify 
because  it's  a  different  color.  And  that  grout  came  from  relatively 
close-in.  How  did  it  get  through,  if  we're  forming  a  plug?  It  clearly 
couldn't  have  been  moving,  or  I  don't  think  it  could  have  been 
moving,  as  fast  as  the  ground  shock.  If  it  wasn't,  then  why  didn't 
the  ground  shock  cause  the  pipe  to  be  closed  ahead  of  it?  That 
stream  didn't  get  through  there  afterwards,  because  it  is  a  well 
defined  stream,  and  it  wouldn't  maintain  that  kind  of  definition. 
That  implies  we  had  a  low  impedance  path  through  what  we  would 
like  to  think  was  a  plug,  and  this  stuff  was  being  extruded  through 
it. 

We've  seen  that  more  than  once,  and  that's  very  frightening. 
It  suggests  to  us  that  this  plug  doesn't  always  have  the  integrity  we 
would  like  to  think  it  does.  The  other  disturbing  thing  relating  to 
the  extensions  is  that,  although  we  don't  understand  why  it's 


476 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


happening,  there  is  some  empirical  evidence  that  we've  had  more 
problems  since  we've  used  the  long  extensions  than  when  we  had  the 
short  ones.  You  know,  we  had  a  sequence  of  events  when  we 
decided  we  understood  everything. 

Carothers:  That's  right.  There  was  a  time  when  you  might  well 
have  thought  that. 

Dismukes:  And  those  pipes  had  iron  reverse  cones  which  were 
somewhat  shorter.  Then  we  got  smart,  and  things  appeared  to  really 
work  well  for  a  while,  but  we've  had  a  lot  of  problems  since  then. 
Other  things,  many,  many  other  things  have  changed,  like  pipe 
taper.  A  number  of  people  have  studied  this  very  hard,  and  there's 
no  finger  to  point  at  one  thing  and  say,  "That's  what  did  it." 

Carothers:  I  believe  that.  At  the  presentations  to  the  Panel 
there  are  often  lots  of  viewgraphs  which  are  designed  to  show  that 
the  upcoming  shot  looks  very  much  like  previous  ones.  "Weil,  see, 
here's  a  whole  bunch  of  other  shots,  showing  where  the  various 
stemming  grouts  are  and  how  long  they  are.  And  see,  this  one  looks 
very  much  like  them,  because  the  grout  sections  are  pretty  much  the 
same.  And  so,  this  one  is  good."  And  I  sit  there,  and  I  think,  "I'll 
bet  there's  probably  two  hundred  and  seventeen  other  things  that 
are  different,  ranging  from  different  manufacturers  of  the  cables,  to 
a  different  method  of  mining,  to  a  different  tuff,  to  who  knows 
what." 

Dismukes:  Sure,  and  that's  one  thing  I  think  we  are  really 
fighting,  and  there's  no  way  to  beat  it;  you  can  never  repeat  a  test. 
The  medium  you're  shooting  in  has  to  be  different,  either  because 
it  has  been  shaken  by  another  test,  or  just  because  the  earth  is  not 
homogeneous. 

Carothers:  How  would  you  summarize  the  state  of  the  thinking 
today  about  the  front-end,  including  the  reverse  cone?.  Do  people 
feel  fairly  satisfied  with  it? 

Dismukes:  I  always  hesitate  to  answer  those  questions  because 
I  feel  it's  very  tempting  to  be  self-serving  and  say  they're  wonderful, 
and  there's  clearly  no  problem,  because  we  designed  them  and  we 
think  they  work. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  people  who  are  concerned  about 
it.  I'm  somewhat  concerned  about  the  reverse  cone,  because  of  the 
number  of  seeps  we've  had  since  we  started  using  these  longer, 


Pipe  Flow 


All 


heavier  ones.  We  had  that  long  sequence  of  events  with  no  apparent 
problems,  where  we  decided  we  clearly  understood  everything.  I 
don't  think  we  did,  and  the  one  problem  that  I  have  with  those  shots 
is  that  we  missed  a  beautiful  opportunity  when  we  didn't  reenter 
them.  We  didn't  look  at  them,  so  we  don't  know  what  they  did  in 
close.  So,  we  don't  know  what  a  good  shot  looks  like,  or  we  haven't 
seen  very  many. 

We're  just  amazed  every  time  we  do  look  because  there's 
always  something  different  that  we  don't  like  to  see.  That's 
somewhat  disturbing,  but  clearly  there  wasn't  a  lot  of  radioactivity 
seeping  into  the  tunnel  on  those  shots,  that's  for  sure.  You  have  to 
be  concerned  that  we've  done  something  bad  making  the  changes 
that  we  have.  The  calculations  say  that  we've  reduced  the  pipe  flow 
significantly,  and  I  think  the  measurements  of  pipe  flow  tend  to 
support  that,  at  least  qualitatively.  As  far  as  earlier  time  frames,  in 
the  front-end,  I  feel  that  that's  not  a  problem. 

Carothers:  That's  something  that,  in  principle,  ought  to  be 
calculable  with  codes  you  really  believe,  on  time  scales  you  under¬ 
stand. 

Dismukes:  But  you  won't  get  a  universal  agreement  on  that. 
As  long  as  we  keep  doing  the  type  of  devices  and  yields  that  we  have 
been  doing,  we  shouldn't  have  to  worry  about  it.  But  if  we  suddenly 
go  to  very  low  yields,  where  the  energy  is  very  limited,  I'm  not  sure 
we  would  know  what  to  expect.  We  try  to  design  these  things  to  be 
far  from  the  edge  of  a  phenomenological  cliff.  So,  if  the  energy 
changes  a  factor  of  two  it  doesn't  really  matter,  and  the  system 
doesn't  respond  in  a  non-linear  way.  We  try  to  operate  in  what  I 
think  is  a  fairly  comfortable  regime,  where  we  can  afford  to  be 
wrong  by  quite  a  bit,  and  still  have  things  basically  work  right. 

If  we  start  going  to,  for  instance,  very  low  yield  devices,  it's  a 
whole  new  ball  game,  because  the  containment,  in  the  normal  sense, 
can't  be  achieved  with  the  ground  shock.  Then  the  game  is  to  make 
sure  you  don't  wreck  one  of  the  key  elements  further  down  the  pipe 
because  the  front-end  didn't  work  right.  There  would  be,  maybe, 
more  threat  of  having  to  deal  with  jets  of  material  out  of  the  device 
itself,  and  that's  something  we've  only  tried  to  deal  with  once,  and 
that  was  not  a  success.  That  was  on  the  Hybla  Fair  event.  Weclearly 


478  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

didn't  design  that  one  very  well.  Apparently  the  back  of  the  test 
chamber  got  blown  out  by  what  came  up  the  pipe.  For  the  kinds  of 
devices  DNA  is  currently  using  I'm  pretty  comfortable. 

Carothers:  Really?  How  about  the  reverse  cone? 

Dismukes:  Well,  I'm  a  little  nervous  about  that,  because  we've 
seen  some  things  that  don't  make  me  feel  good.  The  Bermuda 
Triangle  of  containment  to  me  is  the  few  meters  beyond  the  reverse 
cone,  and  maybe  it  includes  the  end  of  the  reverse  cone.  That's  the 
time  frame  of  a  few  milliseconds.  Nobody's  dealing  with  that 
problem,  for  a  lot  of  reasons  -  -  partly  for  the  reasons  you  already 
reviewed.  You  have  this  little  thin  pipe  in  there,  stretching  over 
many  meters  in  length,  and  there  don't  seem  to  be  enough  zones, 
even  with  the  current  fast  computers,  to  really  deal  with  that.  Plus, 
there's  a  combination  of  high  shear  flow  in  the  pipe,  where  you  have 
very  hot  gases  shearing  against  the  pipe  while  it's  blowing  out.  And, 
you  also  need  to  treat  the  strength  of  the  material  fairly  carefully, 
because  the  shocks  are  getting  down  under  a  hundred  kilobars.  Plus 
there  are  some  weak  shocks  of  a  few  kilobars  out  of  the  pipe.  So, 
you  need  to  treat  strength  carefully.  You  need  a  Lagrangian  code 
for  that,  but  a  Lagrangian  code  can't  handle  the  shear  in  the  pipe. 
We  need  a  different  approach,  I  think. 

Peterson:  Carl  Keller  thought  for  years  that  the  most  damaging 
thing  coming  down  to  the  closures  was  the  pipe  flow.  He  thought 
that  even  to  the  extent  that  one  might  be  able  to  remove  some  of 
the  closures  if  you  could  eliminate  the  pipe  flow.  Subsequently  we 
reduced  the  pipe  flow  a  lot,  and  the  reduction  of  pipe  flow  correlates 
better  with  increasing  bad  experience  than  with  anything  else.  I 
don't  understand  why.  It  may  be,  for  example,  that  the  flow  we 
measure  is  not  the  damaging  one.  And  so,  we  reduced  the  part  we 
can  measure,  but  we  may  have  increased  the  one  which  we  can't 
measure.  It  seems  that  for  almost  any  technical  detail  you  can  bring 
up  there  is  evidence  on  both  sides;  there's  contradictory  evidence 
as  to  which  way  you  ought  to  go  in  changing  it. 

Carothers:  Dan,  when  you  talk  about  late-time  calculations, 
what  is  late  time  for  you?  When  does  it  begin? 

Patch:  Late  time  for  us  was,  and  this  goes  back  into  the  history 
of  before  I  joined  the  program,  times  beginning  something  like  a 
millisecond  after  the  detonation,  and  in  principle  it  goes  on  essen- 


Pipe  Flow 


479 


tially  forever,  until  nobody  is  interested  anymore.  In  actual 
practice,  late  time  calculationaily  has  been  from  about  a  millisecond 
to  about  a  second.  That's  kind  of  the  time  span,  because  that's  a 
critical  time  range  for  containment. 

Some  of  the  things  that  we  have  done  were  empirical,  to  look 
at  data  from  a  number  of  shots,  and  try  to  understand  the  time  scale 
they  failed  on  and  why  they  failed.  Some  of  the  things  we  did  were 
to  look  at  fracture  and  fracture  processes. 

When  I  was  at  S-Cubed  I  was  working  very  closely  under  the 
wing  of  Jim  Barthel.  Jim  was  doing  1  1 /2  D  pipe  flow  calculations 
with  the  FLIP  code.  So,  I  concentrated  pretty  much,  for  the  three 
years  I  was  S-Cubed,  on  this  energetic  pipe-flow  code,  which  was 
subsequently  used  for  Hybla  Gold,  and  the  nuclear  shock  tube 
studies.  That  was  my  primary  area  of  interest.  In  the  last  six  months 
to  a  year  I  had  branched  out,  and  was  looking  at  ground  motion  from 
the  data  base  point  of  view.  It  was  the  old  issue  of  HE-nuclear 
equivalence.  What  could  we  determine  from  the  data  base  that 
exists  for  the  number  of  HE  shots  that  were  done,  and  there  were 
quite  a  few  HE  shots  done  in  the  early  seventies,  versus  what  the  data 
base  for  the  nuclear  tests  had? 

Carothers:  When  you  talk  about  ground  motion,  do  you  mean 
close-in  motion?  You  don't  care  about  the  surface  motion,  or 
seismic  signals,  for  instance,  do  you? 

Patch:  We  really  did  not  look  at  the  surface  or  seismic  motions 
at  all.  We  were  much  more  interested  in  the  stress  range  out  to 
about  a  kilobar,  where  the  materials  transition  out  of  the  plastic 
regime.  The  strength  is  very  important  there;  the  materials  are 
plastic,  but  the  strength  modeling  is  important.  In  a  way,  the  late¬ 
time  containment,  almost,  was  the  regime  in  which  the  motions 
were  strength  dominated  from  a  calculational  point  of  view,  at  that 
time. 

Carothers:  People  talk  about  the  energy  release  being  so  large 
that  it  overwhelms  the  strength  of  the  rocks,  so  the  kind  of  rocks 
don't  matter,  close  in. 

Patch:  Our  primary  interest  was  when  that  wasn't  true  any 
more.  We  were  interested  further  out  in  time,  further  out  in 
distance.  That  statement  is  sort  of  true  for  some  small  time  period, 
and  in  some  small  regime.  What  we  do  is  greatly  simplify  the  details 


480  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

of  the  zero  room  and  the  front-end.  Then  we  start  at  zero  time  and 
basically  let  it  grow  in  a  more  or  less  spherical  way.  We  may  model 
some  shapes,  but  we  don't  do  a  detailed  analysis  of  the  hardware  and 
its  effects  on  the  ground  shock.  So,  we  start  at  zero  time,  and  we 
kind  of  sluff  through  the  early  part.  Right  now  we're  really  trying 
to  fill  the  gap  between  the  classic  early-time  calculations  and  the 
late-time  work  we've  done.  We're  trying  to  do  a  better  job  there. 
What  I  would  say  is  that  what  we  would  like  to  do  is  start  the 
calculations  with  the  details  of  the  zero  room  environment,  with  the 
most  important  mechanical  details,  but  probably  not  with  the 
sophisticated  treatments  that  are  done  so  well  in  trying  to  set  the 
timing  of  all  the  hardware. 

Carothers:  Do  you  also  look  at  the  material  transport  down  the 
pipe? 

Patch:  We  have  not  done  much  with  that.  That's  an  area  we 
are  just  starting  to  work  in.  We  have  relied  on  S-Cubed  to  give  us 
a  definition  of  that  pipe  environment.  We've  put  that  into  the 
calculations,  as  best  we  can  do  it,  as  a  boundary  condition. 

Carothers:  You  look  at  the  cavity  growth,  the  shock  that  moves 
out,  and  basically  you  try  to  tell  people  what  the  stemming  is  going 
to  do,  and  what  the  loads  on  the  closure  hardware  are  going  to  be? 

Patch:  Yes.  We  try  not  only  to  tell  them  what  is  going  to 
happen,  but  hopefully  we're  a  little  more  proactive.  We  not  only 
look  to  see  what  the  problems  might  be,  but  to  say,  "You  really  need 
a  smaller  tunnel  in  this  region,  and  you  ought  to  take  this  out  a  little 
farther,"  and  so  on.  So,  in  a  way  we  attempt  to  tune  the  geometry 
of  the  test  bed,  depending  on  the  medium  properties  and  the 
objectives  of  the  test.  The  basic  geometry  of  each  test  has,  in  some 
sense,  experimental  constraints,  such  as  the  length  of  the  pipe,  the 
taper  angle,  the  yield  limits,  where  it's  fielded,  and  lots  of  other 
things.  At  the  lowest  order  we  attempt  to  identify  what  are  the 
undesirable  features  of  the  test  bed,  and  try  to  figure  out  how  they 
can  best  be  mitigated.  I  think  I  would  be  overstating  our  role  if  we 
said  we  were  really  fine-tuning  the  designs.  We  try  to,  but  it's  a  very 
complicated  world  out  there.  Calculators  always  have  to  guard 
against  the  idea  that  they're  doing  something  real,  that  they  know 
what  they're  doing,  but  we're  doing  the  best  that  we  can. 


Pipe  Flow  481 

Carothers:  What's  the  origin  of  the  material  that  makes  up  the 
pipe  flow? 

Patch:  I  think  it  comes  from  the  pipe  region  just  beyond  the 
reverse  cone.  The  reverse  cone  keeps  the  pipe  from  expanding,  and 
I  think  that  a  real  contributor  to  the  flow  is  the  fact  that  when  the 
ground  shock  comes  along,  the  pipe  is  not  what  you  think  it  is.  It's 
some  new  shape,  which  is  a  lot  bigger.  I  think  the  reverse  cone  is 
probably  pretty  effective  in  keeping  that  expansion  from  being  as 
bad  as  it  would  be  without  it.  But  the  reverse  cone  is  kind  of  tapering 
down;  it's  quite  a  long  distance  in  physical  space,  but  it's  probably 
coming  down  a  little  too  soon.  We're  still  getting  many  kilobars  of 
stress  off  the  end  onto  a  bare  pipe,  which  can't  handle  that.  Of 
course,  that  pipe  is  blowing  up,  so  that  stress  actually  may  be  applied 
to  the  tuff  in  a  way,  because  the  pipe,  I  suspect,  fractures.  It  can 
only  expand  maybe  five  percent  for  mild  steel,  and  then  it's  going 
to  begin  to  shatter.  So,  I  think  that  region  is  the  source  of  the  really 
serious  part  of  the  flow. 

Carothers:  This  serious  part  of  the  flow;  do  you  think  it's  pipe 
material,  or  some  of  the  grout,  or  both? 

Patch:  I  think  it's  both.  I  suspect  there's  a  fair  amount  of  steam 
that's  generated  from  the  very  strong  collapse  forces.  They're  very 
convergent,  so  that  tends  to  act  like  a  shaped  charge.  I  think  that 
these  collapse  forces  are  generating  very  high  pressures  on  a 
relatively  limited  amount  of  material. 

Carothers:  Why  don't  you  make  the  pipe  square? 

Patch:  That  question  has  been  asked  many  times,  and  it's  a 
question  that's  never  been  satisfactorily  answered.  I  personally 
don't  think  it  would  make  very  much  difference.  We've  fought  this 
battle  back  and  forth,  and  I  don't  know  that  anybody  has  shed  any 
real  light  on  how  important  the  pipe  being  circular  is.  I've  heard  it 
argued  that  because  seemingly  very  similar  shots  have  quite  differ¬ 
ent  flow,  therefore  if  we  get  just  perfect  convergence,  for  whatever 
reason,  we're  in  a  much  more  serious  regime  than  if  things  are 
slightly  off.  And  I've  heard  it  argued  the  other  way,  that  the  flow 
can't  really  be  that  sensitive  to  the  shape,  and  there  are  other  factors 
that  are  causing  these  differences.  I  would  really  like  to  know  the 


answer. 


482 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  I  remember  on  the  CEP,  for  meeting  after  meeting 
people  would  talk  about  jets  down  the  pipe.  Why  were  there  jets? 
Weil,  when  you  make  a  bazooka  shell  you  try  to  make  a  jet,  and  the 
way  to  make  it  is  you  make  a  nice  cone  of  HE  which  you  light  at  the 
apex.  So,  you  have  a  conical  thing  that  slaps  shut,  and  out  comes 
a  jet.  And  so  there  was  always  the  thought,  "Why  do  you  make  the 
pipes  so  symmetrical?" 

Dismukes:  It's  certainly  cheaper  to  do  it  that  way,  rather  than 
to  make  them  oblong  or  oval.  Not  a  lot  though.  There  is  one  basic 
argument  why  circular  is  better  than  the  other  cross  sections.  You 
get  the  maximum  exposure  area  from  the  device  for  the  minimum 
volume  of  open  pipe.  But  I  think  that  may  be  a  second  order  effect. 
In  fact,  the  symmetry  in  the  production  of  jets  may  be  something 
we  should  try  to  avoid,  but  we've  always  been  very  conservative, 
maybe  to  a  fault,  in  not  wanting  to  try  things  we  didn't  think  we 
could  calculate. 

Carothers:  Are  the  pipes  and  the  closures  symmetric  because 
that's  what  you  can  calculate,  or  did  you  build  symmetrically 
oriented  codes  because  that's  the  way  things  were  built?" 

Dismukes:  I  believe  that  primarily  it's  the  first  thing  you  said. 
We  tend  to  build  things  we  think  we  can  calculate.  But  Carl  Keller 
did  bring  the  helical  insert  into  the  system.  Clearly  we  don't  know 
how  to  calculate  that. 

Carothers:  And  there  have  been  things  called  mufflers. 

Dismukes:  And  those  did  appear  to  have  at  least  some 
beneficial  effects.  I  never  understood  how  they  worked,  but  they 
sure  did  something.  There's  no  question  about  that.  We  used  them 
for  quite  a  while.  They've  sort  of  fallen  out  of  favor  though. 

Carothers:  The  helix  was  put  inside  the  pipe.  One  could  put 
it  on  the  outside  of  the  pipe. 

Dismukes:  Weil,  we've  looked  at  that,  a  little  bit.  We  were 
convinced  that  you  ought  to  be  able  to  achieve  some  benefit  by 
asymmetrically  loading  the  pipe  from  the  outside.  However,  that 
was  never  demonstrated.  It's  difficult  to  calculate,  but  we  did  try 
to  do  some  calculations.  There  were  also  some  HE  experiments 
done  to  investigate  the  helix  effect.  They  tried  some  cases  of 
loading  the  outside  asymmetrically,  and  couldn't  see  that  it  did 


Pipe  Flow 


483 


anything,  so  that  sort  of  fell  out  of  favor.  There  has  to  be  something 
there,  but  we've  never  gotten  serious  about  doing  something  about 
it. 


Keller:  We  did  embark  on  quite  an  experimental  series, 
studying  the  formation  and  the  attenuation  of  jets  in  the  LOS  pipes. 
That  really  was  an  extension  of  that  original  debate  about  where  the 
energy  in  the  pipe  was  coming  from.  I  had  decided  that  the  jetting 
process  was  ideal  if  you  had  a  nice  symmetric  geometry.  And,  there 
were  all  kinds  of  extra  precautions  taken  in  the  design  of  things,  like 
shells,  that  were  to  produce  jets.  I  thought,  therefore,  that  there 
was  probably  a  way  to  discourage  them.  So,  I  had  some  calculations 
done  at  S-Cubed,  and  some  experiments  done  at  Physics  Interna¬ 
tional,  and  people  are  still  looking  at  those  results. 

We  did  a  series  of  experiments  in  which  we  imploded  pipes  with 
high  explosives;  just  a  cylinder  surrounded  by  high  explosives, 
detonated  at  one  end.  It  gave  a  jet  out  the  end  of  that  pipe  that  was 
just  awesome.  With  a  two  inch  pipe,  with  about  a  half  inch  of 
nitromethane  on  the  outside,  you  could  generate  a  jet  that  would 
punch  a  two  inch  hole  through  six  inches  of  solid  aluminum.  It  was 
really  impressive.  The  PI  people  just  couldn't  believe  it  the  first  time 
they  tried  it  -  -  the  damage  they  did  to  the  target  they  put  out  there. 
They  put  out  a  two  inch  target  the  first  time,  and  the  jet  went 
through  it  like  soft  butter.  So,  they  put  in  a  six  inch  target,  and  it 
went  through  that.  They  were  very  impressed. 

Well,  we  tried  a  helix  on  the  outside,  and  it  worked  beautifully; 
it  just  completely  eliminated  the  jetting.  There  was  just  a  speckling 
on  the  front  of  the  target.  We  took  some  flash  x-rays  of  the  pipes, 
with  and  without  the  helix  on  the  outside,  and  they  showed  that  the 
helix  did  perturb  the  implosion.  So  we  thought,  "No  problem,  we'll 
just  do  that  on  the  nuclear  tests."  We  were  trying  to  simulate  with 
this  HE  implosion  of  the  pipe  the  ground  shock  implosion  of  the 
pipe. 

I  don't  know  remember  whether  it  was  by  E.  T.  Morris,  from 
Physics  International,  or  Russ  Duff,  from  S-Cubed,  but  the  question 
was  raised;  "Well,  maybe  the  implosion  from  the  ground  shock  is 
different  than  that  from  HE."  And  that  was  certainly  a  possibility. 
So  we  scaled  down  the  HE  shots  to  three-quarter  inch  tubes,  drove 


484 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


them  with  HE,  and  still  got  the  target  damage.  Then  we  put  in  three- 
quarter  inch  tubes  radiating  out  from  a  three  hundred  pound 
nitromethane  charge  in  saturated  sand,  so  we  generated  a  ground 
shock  that  imploded  the  pipes.  We  got  awesome  target  damage. 

Then  E.T.  Morris  and  I  were  sitting  in  the  SRI  cloakroom 
waiting  for  a  DNA  meeting,  and  we  were  depicting  the  geometries 
on  ten  pipes  that  we  were  going  to  put  around  the  next  nitrometh¬ 
ane  sphere.  We  tried  changing  the  nature  of  the  jet  by  lining  the 
pipe.  One  pipe  we  lined  with  paper,  sort  of  carbon-like,  one  pipe 
we  lined  with  glass,  one  pipe  we  lined  with  polyethylene.  And  we 
thought,  "Well,  that  ought  to  really  change  the  nature  of  the  jet." 
We  were  thinking  we  could  perhaps  modify  the  damage  by  modify¬ 
ing  the  material  that  was  in  the  jet. 

We  also  used  a  very  heavy  walled  pipe  that  was  wrapped  with 
lead.  It  was  a  really  heavy  walled  pipe  because  the  calculations  had 
shown  that  a  heavy  walled  pipe  was  more  effective  even  than  the 
assymmetry.  These  were  S-Cubed  calculations,  and  that  configura¬ 
tion  had  shown  the  lowest  jetting,  in  those  calculations,  for  years. 

I  heard  that  heavy  walled  pipes  were  better  long  before  I  ever  got 
to  DNA.  But  there  was  some  worry  about  trying  them  on  a  shot, 
because  we  thought  that  if  we  really  changed  the  form  of  the  energy 
from  a  gas  flowing  down  the  pipe  to  a  cannon  ball,  that  the  cannon 
ball  might  do  more  damage  to  the  doors  than  the  gas  flow.  So,  there 
was  some  reluctance  to  try  it.  But  since  we  were  just  doing  these 
HE  experiments  we  could  try  it  without  any  risk,  so  we  put  in  a  heavy 
walled  pipe. 

We  had  one  left  and  we  were  asking  ourselves,  "What  shall  we 
try  now?  What's  the  variation?"  We  decided  that  maybe  the  plastic 
lined  pipe  would  show  the  biggest  difference,  and  if  we  made  that 
with  an  asymmetric  liner,  it  would  even  be  better.  And  so  our  tenth 
pipe  had  a  plastic  helix  on  the  inside.  The  helix  was  only  about 
fourteen  mils  thick,  and  the  pipe  wall  was  about  twelve  mils  thick. 
So,  it  was  like  heavy  scotch  tape  that  we  sealed  to  the  pipe. 

They  fired  the  shot,  and  E.T.  called  me  up  and  said,  "You  won't 
believe  the  results."  And  he  went  through  the  pipes.  We  had  a 
couple  of  normal  pipes  on  the  shot,  standard  pipes  with  nothing  in 
them.  They  put  big  holes  in  the  target.  All  the  pipes  with  the  liners 
-  -  paper,  plastic,  and  glass  -  -  put  bigger  holes  in  the  target.  The 
heavy  walled  pipe  put  the  biggest  hole  in  the  target.  The  heavy  wall 
not  only  did  not  attenuate  the  jet,  it  made  it  the  worst  of  all,  directly 


Pipe  Flow 


485 


contrary  to  the  lore.  And  the  pipe  with  the  plastic  helix  made  no 
crater  at  all.  We  couldn't  believe  that  plastic  helix  made  such  a 
difference.  There  was  another  pipe  which  had  a  lead  helix  on  the 
outside  to  simulate  the  assymmetry  we  had  used  with  the  HE  so 
successfully.  It  made  a  big  hole  in  the  target. 

So,  of  all  those  things  we  tried,  nothing  worked  except  the 
internal  helix  of  plastic.  We  thought,  "Well,  maybe  there  was  a 
mistake  in  the  experiment.  Maybe  a  mouse  crawled  in  that  pipe  and 
just  blocked  it  off,  or  something."  We  couldn't  believe  that  helix 
could  be  that  effective.  So  we  tried  it  again.  This  time  we  put  in 
a  steel  helixe,  a  lead  helixe,  a  plastic  helix,  and  we  tried  some  of  the 
other  pipes  again.  We  had  twenty  pipes  around  the  sphere  this  time. 
We  fired  that,  and  sure  enough,  all  the  internal  helixes  were  just 
miraculous  in  their  attenuation  of  the  jet.  At  the  time  we  didn't 
know  whether  we  were  reducing  the  source,  or  whether  we  were 
attenuating  it.  Eventually  we  learned  that  we  were  attenuating  the 
flow.  The  helix  has  no  effect  on  the  source. 

We  tried  many  things  of  that  kind,  and  it  was  a  fascinating 
program,  because  we  were  studying  all  this  parameter  space  experi¬ 
mentally.  Things  that  would  take  weeks  to  calculate,  you  could  just 
try.  With  twenty  pipes  we  could  try  anything,  and  in  a  very  short 
time. 

I  told  Don  Eilers  at  Los  Alamos  about  the  results,  and  he  was 
really  excited  about  them.  He  decided  he'd  try  it  on  a  nuclear  test, 
so  he  put  in  a  pipe  with  an  internal  helix,  and  one  without  on  the 
Flora  event,  in  1980.  He  instrumented  them  to  measure  the 
penetrations  of  steel  plates  at  the  end  of  the  pipes.  And  he  found 
that  he  got  a  major  reduction  in  the  number  of  plates  penetrated 
with  the  internal  helix.  Los  Alamos  has  used  it  ever  since,  and  so 
has  Livermore,  to  reduce  the  flow  of  energy  in  the  some  of  the 
longer  diagnostic  pipes. 

Bass:  I  think  the  best  thing  we  could  do  to  help  ourselves  would 
be  to  put  the  helix  back  in  the  pipe. 

Carothers:  Why  was  it  taken  out? 

Bass:  Every  event  that  has  had  a  helix  has  seeped  more  than 
Joe  (LaComb)  wants.  Now  why?  Why  does  he  say  it  leaks?  Because 
you  are  dissipating  energy  quite  close  in,  into  the  stemming,  more 
than  you  were  without  the  helix.  You're  also  getting  in  the 


486  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

stemming  where  gas  can  go  around  your  facility.  That's  the  only 
leak  that  you're  liable  to  see  through  geologic  features,  is  ]oe's 
point.  As  far  as  I'm  concerned,  all  the  DNA  work  I've  done,  or  have 
been  connected  with  where  there  was  a  leak,  has  leaked  in  the  line- 
of-sight  pipe.  Except,  where  the  leaks  came  from  a  region  where 
there  was  a  helix.  There  have  been  little  leaks  there.  Otherwise,  it 
has  come  right  down  the  tunnel.  1  don't  think  we  have  ever,  or  at 
least  very  rarely,  leaked  through  the  formation.  I  think  we  leak 
through  man-made  facilities. 

Carothers:  How  about  the  the  experiments  Carl  Keller  de¬ 
scribed  which  he  had  done  to  look  at  pipe  flow?  These  were  the  HE 
experiments  with  a  dozen  pipes  with  a  helix  of  this  kind  and  that  kind 
in  them,  and  they  were  all  on  the  same  shot. 

Bass:  The  trouble  is,  the  helix  on  those  HE  shots  is  not  the  helix 
on  a  nuclear  event.  The  helix  works  in  an  entirely  different  manner 
in  a  nuclear  event  than  it  does  with  HE.  Carl  said  the  helix  worked 
late.  In  fact,  it  works  early.  If  the  helix  works,  the  pressure  outward 
on  the  pipe  has  to  be  increased.  What  we  find  on  events  where  we 
had  a  helix,  the  pressure  at  50  meters,  which  on  DNA  events  is 
where  there  is  a  muffler  section,  the  pressure  out  of  the  pipe  is  down 
by  an  order  of  magnitude  if  there  is  a  helix.  That  says  any  reduction 
has  to  have  occurred  earlier.  Either  that  or  we  don't  have  any  idea 
how  a  helix  works.  Maybe  we  don't  know  how  a  helix  works. 

We  do  know  that  on  one  event  the  pressures  went  up  inside  the 
muffler  section  when  a  helix  was  used,  and  that  had  never  happened 
before.  That  says  we  added  disorder  to  the  flow.  We  had  pressures 
higher  coming  out  of  the  muffler  than  we  had  going  into  the  muffler, 
and  we  had  pressure  measurements  inside  the  muffler  which  were 
high  as  you  go  through  the  muffler,  higher  than  when  you  went  into 
the  muffler.  This  is  very  unusual,  and  it  only  happened  one  time. 
That  one  time  we  had  a  helix  up  close  to  the  front.  So,  we  added 
disorder  to  the  flow.  Where  we  didn't  have  the  helix,  the  muffler 
didn't  seem  to  do  much.  Where  we  had  the  helix  the  muffler  did 
one  hell  of  a  lot.  Which  says  to  me  we  had  all  kinds  of  things  going 
on.  This  has  been  discounted  completely,  and  nobody  has  paid  any 
attention  to  it. 


Pipe  Flow 


487 


Peterson:  At  about  the  time  that  Pac  Tech  split  off  from  S- 
Cubed  Norton  Rimer  and  and  myself  started  working  on  what  we 
termed  the  late-time  containment  issues.  Those  are  the  cavity 
growth,  the  cavity  conditions,  leaks  to  the  tunnel  complexes,  the 
ground  motion,  the  thermodynamic  and  fluid  flow  process  --  the 
very  slow  processes  that  you  see. 

Carothers:  When  you  say  the  late-time,  where  do  you  pick  that 
up? 

Peterson:  I  suppose  about  ten  milliseconds.  All  of  these  times 
are  relative,  but  compared  to  the  times  of  the  explosion  they  are 
slow. 

Carothers:  I  read  somewhere  once,  and  I  think  about  it 
occasionally  when  I  think  about  time  scales  for  containment,  that  if 
you  wanted  to  build  an  accurate  scale  model  of  the  solar  system,  you 
would  have  to  make  it  not  much  smaller  than  the  system  is.  There 
are  very  large  distances,  and  if  you  try  to  scale  them  to  a  reasonable 
size,  then  some  of  the  smaller  things,  like  much  of  the  asteroid  belt, 
vanish.  They  get  so  little  you  can't  see  them. 

In  a  similar  way,  when  you  think  about  the  time  scale  of 
containment  processes,  which  goes  from  small  fractions  of  a  micro¬ 
second  out  to  perhaps  a  few  hours,  how  can  you  possibly  scale  this 
to  where  everything  fits?  It's  got  to  be  in  chunks,  in  a  way. 

Peterson:  That  is  correct,  and  of  course,  that  is  one  of  the  real 
difficulties  in  looking  at  it,  because  we  do,  being  people,  tend  to 
split  things  into  problems  we  can  digest.  But  when  we  do  that,  we 
lose  the  coupling  effects  between  them,  which  can  be  very  impor¬ 
tant.  You  arbitrarily  split  on  what  you  think  you  can  understand, 
and  that  has  nothing  to  do  with  what  might  be  the  most  important. 
So,  if  you  look  at  the  way  we  evaluate  containment,  we  do  have  it 
split  into  the  time  scales  of  various  effects.  We  will  look  at  cavity 
growth,  we  will  look  at  ground  motion,  we  will  look  at  pipe  flow,  we 
will  look  at  leakage,  and  things  like  that,  but  they're  all  very,  very 
coupled.  And  one  of  the  things  I  think  we've  fallen  short  on  is  to 
look  at  the  coupling  effects  between  these  things.  In  other  words, 
pipe  flow  is  coupled  very  closely  to  ground  motion  and  cavity 
growth. 


488  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Duff:  The  early  efforts  recognized  that  the  problem  of  flow  in 
the  line-of-sight  pipe,  plasma  flow,  is  a  very  complex  problem  and 
very  hard  to  calculate.  It's  complex  because  the  hydrodynamics 
that  we  are  dealing  with  is  obscure.  We  don't  really  know  the  source 
of  this  axisymmetric  jet.  We  don't  know  whether  it  is  a  jet  of 
material  which  has  been  strongly  irradiated,  vaporized,  modified, 
melted,  whatever,  and  then  subsequently  is  closed  off  under  ground 
shock.  We  don't  know  the  detailed  nature  of  that  closure.  Is  it  truly 
an  axisymmetric  thing,  or  just  due  to  the  nature  of  the  non¬ 
uniformities  in  the  real  world  is  it  something  less?  I'm  sure  those 
non-uniformities  influence  the  initial  conditions.  Nevertheless,  we 
made  an  effort  from  day  one  to  try  to  develop  a  numerical  capability 
to  allow  us  to  calculate  the  flow  of  the  material  in  the  pipe,  and  the 
interaction  of  that  flow  with  the  pipe  wail.  That  involves  ablation, 
material  entrainment,  and  all  of  the  processes  that  get  involved.  It 
is  a  complex  problem,  and  I'm  not  sure  we  ever  did  it  very  well. 

We  were  also  acutely  aware  of  the  aspect  ratio  of  the  problem 
we  were  dealing  with.  A  line-of-sight  pipe  is  a  thousand  feet  long; 
it  starts  a  few  inches  in  diameter,  and  ends  up  a  few  feet  in  diameter, 
order  of  magnitude.  If  you  look  at  the  numerical  zoning  require¬ 
ments  for  such  a  geometry,  it  is  a  horrendous  problem. 

Carothers:  Well,  the  zones  just  have  to  be  little  at  one  end  and 
big  on  the  other. 

Duff:  Sure.  And  things  don't  work  well.  The  codes  don’t  work 
well  if  the  aspect  ratio  is  more  than  about  three  to  one.  This  was 
in  the  early  seventies;  we  had  no  Crays.  We  were  working  on  a  link 
to  a  Univac  machine  that  existed  somewhere  else.  Because  of  the 
aspect  ratio  problem  we  developed  what  was  known  as  the  UNION 
code  that  tried  to  couple  three  calculations.  One  was  a  flow  of  the 
plasma,  created  as  well  as  we  could  do  it.  It  was  inside  a  cylindrical 
envelope  which  was  a  2-D  calculation  of  the  stemming  motion  as  a 
result  of  the  ground  shock  as  it  propagated  out.  This  was  buried 
inside  a  1-D  code.  The  UNION  code  was  to  put  boundary 
conditions  between  these  various  things.  That  was  coming  along. 

Jerry  Kent  was  my  assistant  in  those  very  early  days,  and  I  had 
passed  the  contract  over  to  him  to  run.  Bjork  was  one  of  the  major 
project  physicists.  These  guys  became  aware  of  what  we  now  talk 


Pipe  Flow 


489 


of  as  residual  stress,  and  they  used  that  awareness  as  the  basis  of  a 
pitch  to  DNA  to  fund  a  separate  company.  DNA  went  along,  and 
Pacifica  Technology  --  Pac  Tech  --  was  formed. 

Now,  the  point  of  this  is  not  to  bemoan  the  fact  that  part  of  my 
staff  took  off  and  formed  their  own  company.  The  main  difficulty 
from  my  point  of  view,  and  I  think  from  the  containment  point  of 
view,  was  that  the  intellectual  enterprise  of  treating  the  phenom¬ 
enology  from  a  millisecond  to  infinity  was  broken  right  in  the 
middle.  A  new  interface  was  installed.  We  had  the  job  of  trying  to 
define  the  initial  conditions.  That  was  Dismukes,  who  was  doing 
some  aspects  of  the  very  early  time  steps.  Then  Pac  Tech  had  the 
responsibility  to  do  ground  shock  calculations,  not  only  in  a  one¬ 
dimensional  sense,  but  in  the  sense  of  studyingthe  LOS  collapse,  the 
jetting  phenomena,  and  all  that  may  be  happening  in  the  pipe.  And 
then  we  were  supposed  to  worry  about  what  happens  after  that. 
Well,  interfaces  are  awkward.  They  are  awkward  in  the  best  of 
circumstances.  They  are  particularly  awkward  in  a  competitive 
environment. 

Rimer:  The  pipe  flow  aspects  have  always  tended  to  be  called 
late-time.  They're  motions  that  Mike  Higginbotham  computes  for 
Chuck,  and  that  we  put  in  our  pipe  flow  code,  or  at  least  we  used 
to  do  that.  Jim  Barthel  used  to  do  that  work.  All  that  information, 
like  the  pipe  flow,  goes  down  to  Pac  Tech  for  the  stemming  motion 
calculations.  Meanwhile,  we  are  looking  at  free-field  ground 
motion,  model  development,  and  then  the  later  time  aspects,  like 
hydrofracture,  porous  flow,  creep. 

Carothers:  Do  you  generate  the  input  for  the  codes  that  Pac 
Tech  uses  for  the  stemming  motion  calculations? 

Rimer:  Yes,  except  the  pipe  flow  has  not  proved  to  be  very 
important.  You  can  either  include  it  or  not,  and  you  get  the  same 
stemming  ground  motion,  for  whatever  reason.  Now,  what  neither 
of  us  model  is  how  that  pipe  flow  affects  the  properties  of  the  grout. 
The  pipe  expands,  blows  up,  and  none  of  us  have  attempted  to 
model,  because  we  don't  know  how  to  model,  what  that  does  to  that 
grout  material 

There's  a  lot  of  overlap  between  Pac  Tech  and  us.  They  do  a 
lot  of  just  traditional,  straightforward  calculations  of  each  event.  At 
the  same  time,  I'm  calculating  ground  motions.  Here  I'm  talking 


490 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


about  the  underground  free-field  motions  around  the  tunnel,  and  in 
the  tuff  away  from  the  tunnel.  What  are  the  proper  models  for  the 
behavior  of  the  rock?  What  causes  the  rebound?  What  causes  the 
residual  stress  development?  Why  does  the  rock  hydrofracture  or 
not  hydrofracture?  How  do  we  develop  models  to  match  ground 
motion  data?  I'm  the  guy  who's  supposed  to  develop  the  new  stuff, 
do  the  innovations  in  ground  motion  modeling,  etcetera. 

Carothers:  Byron,  after  Mighty  Oak  DNA  made  a  number  of 
changes  in  the  design  of  tunnel  test  beds.  The  last  few  DNA  events 
seemed  to  perform  well.  What  changes  were  made? 

Ristvet:  Well,  first  off,  the  devices  are  lower  yield,  and  so  the 
driving  forces  on  the  stemming  column  are  a  lot  less.  And  we've 
moved  our  closures  out  in  scaled  range  a  lot  further,  so  the 
stemming  anchor  does  not  get  challenged.  Those  came  about  after 
Mighty  Oak,  when  we  took  a  total  reiook  at  Middle  Note,  which  was 
in  1 987.  That  was  the  first  of  the  low  yield  type  of  design  that  now 
has  become  our  standard.  We  found  out  how  to  modify  the 
radiation  environment  so  we  could  use  one  source  to  provide  all  the 
various  kinds  of  radiation  environments.  That's  done  with  shims 
and  filters. 

Again,  things  sometimes  appear  in  the  containment  world  to  be 
cyclic.  Compare  the  following  discussion  with  Byron  Ristvet  with 
the  words  of  Billy  Hudson  and  Carl  Keller  at  the  beginning  of  this 
Chapter. 

Carothers:  I  could  translate  what  you’ve  said  to  mean  that  the 
basic  cause  of  at  least  some  of  the  problems  was  that  the  closures 
were  too  close. 

Ristvet:  Basically  that's  correct,  and  that  happened  in  a  couple 
of  ways.  We  wanted  to  get  to  a  standardized  design.  The  reason  for 
that  was  so  we  only  ordered  a  standard  section  one  and  section  two 
of  the  pipe,  which  are  the  sections  from  the  working  point  all  the 
way  out  to  the  end  of  stemming.  If  we  could  standardize  that  we 
would  save  a  couple  of  million  bucks  every  time  we  went  out  and 
bought  pipe.  Of  course,  that  was  for  the  old  higher  yield  shots. 

Well,  everybody  wanted  everything  possible.  Number  one, 
they  wanted  a  large  aperture  so  they  could  vary  the  exposure  area 
if  it  was  needed,  depending  on  the  source.  We  didn't  use  one  source 
in  those  days,  we  used  different  ones  on  different  shots,  and  some 


Pipe  Flow 


491 


had  larger  areas  to  look  at  compared  to  other  sources.  Apertures 
could  vary  anywhere  up  to  seven  or  eight  inches.  In  order  to 
accommodate  a  seven  or  eight  inch  aperture  you  have  to  have  a 
pretty  good  size  bore. 

Then  we  got  the  idea  we  could  save  a  lot  of  real  estate  and 
money  if  we  made  the  pipe  shorter.  So,  the  way  we  do  that  to  get 
the  same  exposure  area  at  a  shorter  range  is  to  increase  the  beam 
taper,  which  increases  the  pipe  taper.  And  so  now  we  had  increased 
our  cross  sectional  area  of  the  pipe,  especially  up  in  the  front-end 
region,  significantly.  In  closure  technology  in  those  days  we  were 
still  using  the  sliding  gates,  the  Modified  Auxiliary  Closure,  or 
MAC.  Because  of  the  metals  involved  you  can't  make  those  any 
bigger  than  about  six  feet  in  diameter,  and  get  them  to  close  fast 
enough.  Six  feet  is  about  as  big  as  you  can  get  an  aluminum  billet 
that's  forged,  and  that  has  the  strength  that  you  would  like. 

So  now  we  had  to  move  things  in  significantly  closer.  Then  we 
had  them  at  a  range  where  the  grout  stagnation  pressures  were  far 
exceeding  the  door  strengths.  In  addition,  in  the  process  of  trying 
to  perhaps  eliminate  pipe  flow,  we  were  actually  making  pipe  flow 
worse.  On  both  Misty  Rain  and  Mighty  Oak  we  had  reverted  back 
to  using  iron  extensions  rather  than  using  the  high  density  tungsten 
or  uranium  extensions.  One  of  the  reasons  we  did  that  is  that  Carl 
Keller  had  felt  we  were  getting  a  fair  amount  of  yield  out  of  the 
uranium  from  the  fast  neutrons  getting  up  the  pipe.  To  me  that 
never  explained  why  we  saw  plutonium  against  the  MAC,  and  even 
down  further  on  Huron  Landing. 

Carothers:  That's  the  way  you  make  plutonium  -  neutrons  and 
U238. 

Ristvet:  Well,  I  know  you  can  make  it  that  way  in  a  reactor,  but 
it  wasn't  that  kind  of  plutonium.  There  were  some  concerns  about 
that,  so  Carl  went  back  to  the  iron  extensions.  And  of  course,  on 
Misty  Rain  the  pipe  flow  jumped  up  again,  and  it  shot  the  doors  out 
with  the  pipe  flow  -  -  at  least  the  first  one,  and  probably  the  second 
one  too  from  the  evidence  out  in  the  test  chamber.  We  had  sort  of 
a  coating  of  iron,  with  a  coating  of  aluminum,  followed  by  a  coating 
of  grout,  on  every  surface  that  faced  the  working  point.  Not  only 
that,  there  was  pretty  good  cratering  back  on  the  bulkheads  and 
other  things,  because  block  motion  prevented  the  TAPS  from 
coming  down.  That  is  about  as  far  out  as  we've  ever  seen  significant 


492 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


block  motion,  which  is  rather  interesting.  Anyway,  it  was  not  pipe 
taper  alone,  I  don't  think.  It  was  not  bore  size.  It  was  the  fact  that 
all  of  those  things  came  together,  and  we  brought  those  closures  in 
so  close  that  they  were  no  longer  effective  stemming  anchors. 

We  did  a  vertical  shot  called  Huron  King,  and  I  and  Jim  Barthel, 
of  S-Cubed,  looked  at  all  the  old  history.  It  became  rather  obvious 
that  the  HE  machines  in  those  days,  because  they  were  in  so  close, 
became  shrapnel  against  the  rest  of  the  closures.  That's  why  we 
moved  our  HE  machine  out  to  a  similar  stress  range  as  we  use  for 
the  FAC  today.  It  was  in  part  that  experience  that  led  us  to  put  the 
FAC  where  we  do.  I  really  think  we  could  go  back  to  those  larger 
pipe  tapers,  maybe  0.24  inches  per  foot,  24  inches  per  hundred 
feet,  and  be  okay,  if  we  were  in  a  normal  zealotized  tuff. 

If  we  have  the  FAC  out  at  roughly  a  kilobar,  because  we  know 
it  can  withstand  two  or  two  and  a  half  kilobars  so  we've  got  a  good 
factor  of  two  safety,  we  have  confidence  in  the  ability  of  it  to  act  as 
a  stemming  anchor,  and  not  let  the  stemming  go  down  the  LOS  pipe. 

I  think  my  greatest  concern  in  our  current  low  yield  design  is  the 
failure  of  the  FAC  to  fire.  Even  though  ground  shock  will  close  it, 
I  don't  know  how  much  grout  will  have  been  shoved  through  it  at 
that  time,  and  whether  the  cavity  pressure  will  be  sufficiently  far 
down  so  the  stemming  won't  continue  to  hydrofrac  and  erode  as  it 
did  on  Mighty  Oak. 

Peterson:  There  have  been  a  number  of  observations  on  some 
events  that  haven't  performed  just  as  we'd  like  that  I  find  very 
interesting.  You  can  talk  about  pipe  taper,  and  sort  of  the  bad 
performance.  Or  the  performance  wasn't  as  good  once  we  went  to 
the  bigger  pipe  taper.  That's  true.  We  also  went  to  a  longer 
extension,  and  the  performance  wasn't  as  good  after  we  went  to  the 
longer  extension.  Some  of  the  shots  worked  all  right,  but  they  didn't 
all  work  really  good. 

People  say,  for  example,  that  on  Misty  Rain  and  Mighty  Oak, 
because  we  went  to  a  bigger  pipe  taper  we  moved  our  first  closures 
in  much  nearer  the  working  point.  If  you  really  look  at  that,  it  isn't 
much  nearer.  It's  really  a  very  small  distance,  and  the  change  in  the 
dimensions  don't  even  compare  to  changes  that  were  made  in  some 
previous  events. 


Pipe  Flow 


493 


I  believe  it  was  Dido  Queen  where,  from  a  scaled  view,  we  were 
in  much,  much  closer,  and  itworked  fine.  We  went  to  Diablo  Hawk, 
where  the  first  containment  structure  was  much  further  out.  The 
containment  was  okay,  but  the  door  got  penetrated  by  the  grout 
flow.  Various  people  pick  various  different  things  to  explain  these 
things.  People  have  also  picked  on  material  properties;  there  wasn't 
quite  enough  air  void,  or  it  was  a  little  bit  more  saturated,  and  all 
that. 

I  guess  the  one  point  I  would  like  to  make  is  that  if  you  go  back 
and  look  at  all  of  these  things,  and  really  compare  all  the  previous 
experience,  you  can  always  find  one,  two,  or  three  shots  that 
worked  fine  given  any  of  these  things.  And  so,  I  know  I  don't 
understand  it,  and  it's  confusing.  It  makes  you  go  over  to  what  DNA 
is  using  now,  which  is  a  really  strong  stemming  bulkhead.  Given  the 
fact  that  we  don't  seem  to  know  very  well  what  happens,  or  why  it 
happens,  maybe  we  should  build  something  that  should  stop  any¬ 
thing  in  the  tunnel. 

Carothers:  It's  another  overburden  plug,  in  concept.  It’s  to 
hold  whatever  can  get  there. 

Peterson:  Yes.  It  should  hold  the  most  extreme  conditions  that 
we've  measured  so  far.  It  might  not  be  fancy,  but  one  would  hope 
it  would  work.  I  think  when  we  want  to  get  fancy  we  should 
understand  all  the  things  we  know,  and  have  seen.  When  that  will 
happen,  I  don't  know. 

When  the  concept  of  the  "residual  stress"  came  up,  people 
calculated  it  and  could  say,  "Oh,  I  can  see  now  why  the  gas  stays  in 
the  cavity."  One  of  the  things  that  bothered  Carl  Keller  was  that 
now  we  understood  the  residual  stress  field,  and  the  containment 
cage,  we  didn't  want  a  hole  to  go  through  it. 

That  seems  reasonable,  but  one  of  the  things  that  has  always 
puzzled  me  is  that  one  of  the  first  designs,  on  Dining  Car  in  1975, 
seemed  to  work  fine.  There  was  a  pipe  with  a  certain  taper,  and  the 
closures  were  at  a  certain  place.  They  had  rock-matching  grout  out 
to  a  certain  distance,  and  a  superlean  grout  out  further,  and  that 
shot  worked.  Now,  the  peak  of  the  residual  stress  field  on  Dining 
Car  was  in  the  area  in  the  tunnel  where  there  was  superlean  grout, 
which  is  very  weak.  The  rock-matching  grout  stopped  inside  of  that. 


494 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


At  Pac  Tech  they  started  looking  at  these  stemming  plug 
formation  concepts  in  more  detail,  They  did  a  number  of  calcula¬ 
tions,  and  it  appeared  that  if  you  made  the  rock-matching  grout 
column  longer,  and  the  superlean  grout  column  shorter,  you  would 
set  up  a  better  residual  stress  field  across  the  tunnel. 

There  is  nothing  wrong  with  that  concept  whatsoever,  but  that 
was  the  time  when  we  started  to  go  with  longer  reverse  cones  to 
lower  pipe  flow,  and  made  a  few  other  changes.  We  also  started 
seeing  these  slight  bits  of  gas  seeping  into  the  tunnel  complex.  Well, 
who  knows?  So,  the  Mighty  Oak  design  went  back  to  Dining  Car. 
It  had  a  rock-matching  grout  length  back  to  what  it  was  on  Dining 
Car,  and  a  superlean  grout  length  back  to  Dining  Car  too.  Well, 
obviously  that  wasn't  the  answer. 


495 


19 


Codes  and  Calculations 

The  development  of  computer  codes  for  the  calculation  of 
underground  effects  resulting  from  the  detonation  of  a  nuclear 
device  began  concurrently  with  the  first  underground  events.  Bob 
Brownlee  has  described  his  work  on  the  Bernillilo  event,  fired  in 
1958.  At  Livermore  there  was  the  Rainier  tunnel  event  in  1957, 
where  the  principal  objective  was  to  contain  the  device  debris,  and 
the  tunnel  events  for  device  development  in  Hardtack  II  in  1958. 
Logan,  also  in  1958,  was  the  first  tunnel  experiment  to  use  a  line-of- 
sight  pipe  for  effects  experiments,  and  it  contained  well  despite  the 
almost  complete  lack  of  knowledge  about  how  the  detonation  would, 
or  could  be  contained. 

The  Plowshare  program,  which  envisaged  various  civilian 
applications  of  underground  explosions  in  a  variety  of  earth  mate¬ 
rials,  needed  the  capability  to  predict  many  of  the  phenomena  that 
today  are  considered  important  to  the  containment  world,  princi¬ 
pally  those  associated  with  the  response  of  the  earth  to  the  energy 
release  of  the  device.  The  device  development  events,  fired  in 
emplacement  holes  had  considerably  simpler  calculational  require¬ 
ments.  The  appropriate  depth  of  burial  for  the  yield  was  really  all 
that  was  thought  to  be  necessary,  and  for  that  empirical  rules 
seemed  to  suffice. 

Higgins:  By  Hardtack  Gene  Pelsor's  calculations  had  advanced, 
and  John  Nuckolls  had  developed  a  code  called  UNEC  —  the 
Underground  Nuclear  Explosion  Code.  It  was  later  renamed  SOC 
when  John  went  to  one  of  the  device  design  groups.  It  was  a  simple 
one  dimensional  plastic-elastic  code  with  a  Von  Meses  solid  equa¬ 
tion  of  state,  which  doesn't  allow  much  fracturing.  But,  it  did  do 
a  very  nice  job,  with  the  right  adjustable  coefficients,  of  reproducing 
what  was  going  on  in  the  Tunnel  Bed  tuffs.  So,  from  shot  to  shot 
we  could  use  that,  and  see  that  the  shockwave  pressure  was 
generating  a  seal  in  the  tunnel.  What  was  wrong  with  it  was,  the 
equation  of  state  of  the  material  in  the  real  world  is  not  a  Von  Meses 
solid.  It's  brittle. 


496 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Or,  maybe  you  could  say  that  it  is  a  pile  of  rocks. 

Higgins:  It's  a  pile  of  rocks  with  cracks  and  holes.  So,  the 
rebound,  that  part  which  is  really  the  important  part  of  the 
calculation  of  containment,  wasn't  calculated.  But  the  tunnel 
closing,  and  the  pipes  closing;  all  thai  was  calculated  very  well.  Our 
misunderstanding  of  containment  was  that  we  thought  once  the 
material  was  at  a  density  of  three,  it  was  going  to  stay  a  density  of 
three,  and  therefore  we  didn't  have  to  worry  about  it  any  more.  End 
of  problem. 

And  that  really  was  the  end  of  the  problem,  in  a  way,  because 
we  could  calculate  out  to  maybe  a  100  microseconds,  if  we  really 
devoted  everything  we  had  to  it.  And  that  was  only  in  one 
dimension.  Peak  pressures  were  calculated  quite  well,  but  that's 
about  all.  Rise  times  and  decay  curves  were  not  calculated  at  all. 

Rambo:  I  think  some  of  the  very  first  calculations  at  Livermore 
that  had  to  do  with  containment  were  calculations  done  for  the 
Benham  event.  Benham  was  a  high  yield  shot  with  some  kind  of  a 
satellite  hole  that  was  of  concern.  That  was  probably  one  of  the  very 
first  sets  of  containment  calculations. 

Carothers:  That's  rather  late  in  time  if  you  consider  that  the 
Partial  Test  Ban  Treaty  was  signed  in  1963.  Benham  was  in 
December  of  1 968. 

Rambo:  That's  right,  but  we  didn't  have  the  material  proper¬ 
ties  to  do  that  kind  of  work,  and  they  didn't  do  any  logging.  The 
only  times  they  would  do  special  cases  of  logging  was  on  Plowshare 
related  events.  On  those  shots  they  would  go  in  and  do  the  best  job 
they  could  to  log  the  hole,  even  though  the  technology  wasn't  really 
very  good. 

The  K  Division  people,  the  Plowshare  group,  were  starting  to 
do  calculations.  They  had  a  code  which  was  called  SOC,  which  was 
a  1  -D  code,  that  they  had  started  with.  Seymore  Sack  and  George 
Maenchen  did  some  of  the  TENSOR  work  that  was  done.  Then 
there  was  a  kind  of  a  split  there.  K  Division  took  up  some  of  those 
codes,  and  put  strength  models  in  them.  Ted  Cherry  was  the  one 
who  did  most  of  the  strength  models.  He  did  TENSOR  and  I'm  sure 
he  did  some  of  the  work  that  went  into  SOC. 


Codes  and  Calculations 


497 


Carothers:  The  original  impetus  for  doing  calculations  on 
underground  shots  came  from  the  Plowshare  cratering  program,  but 
the  names  you  mentioned  are  those  of  device  designers. 

Rambo:  Yes,  those  device  designers  did  the  original  SOC  code, 
for  the  Plowshare  people. 

Carothers:  SOC  is  a  1  -D  code,  so  that  means  you  spherize  the 
world  around  the  bomb.  What's  a  code  like  that  good  for?  The 
world  is  not  one  dimensional. 

Rambo:  No,  it's  not  one  dimensional,  but  in  the  early  days  we 
didn't  have  a  2-D  code  available.  So,  by  default  we  took  the  1-D 
code  and  said,  "Well,  it  seems  to  predict  ground  motion  reasonably 
well,  at  least  for  the  outgoing  peaks,  before  the  reflections  take 
place."  We  never  did  any  SOC  calculations,  or  darn  few,  that 
related  to  containment  until  after  Baneberry.  There  were  calcula¬ 
tions  done  for  Plowshare.  Then  the  2-D  calculations  came  along, 
and  they  were  put  together  for  the  cratering  shots.  They  were  much 
better. 

Ted  Cherry,  in  the  early  days,  would  try  to  match  field  data 
with  SOC.  There  was  a  lot  of  battling  going  on  as  to  what  was  really 
in  the  code,  and  how  much  truth  there  was  to  the  SOC  code.  It  was 
under  a  lot  of  stress.  People  were  not  confident  of  what  was 
happening.  There  were  problems  with  matching  the  data,  but  that's 
what  you  have  to  do  in  these  calculations.  You  take  a  first  try  at  it, 
and  then  after  the  fact,  you  see  what  you  can  learn  from  it.  What 
you  learn  from  looking  at  the  real  data  is  what  there  is  about  your 
model  that  is  wrong,  or  maybe  you  find  out  that  the  code  was  just 
plain  wrong.  It  was  a  good  feedback  loop.  When  we  did  fail,  we 
learned  more  than  when  we  didn't  fail,  but  we  still  had  a  lot  of 
mysteries  that  we  were  not  able  to  solve. 

Calculations  played  a  different  part,  in  those  earlier  times  at 
Livermore.  People  like  Bob  Terhune  would  walk  over  to  our  people 
and  say,  "Look,  you  can't  shoot  this.  Our  calculations  indicate  this, 
that,  and  the  other  thing."  It  might  have  been  some  private  theory 
of  his  own.  There  were  a  couple  of  places  we  avoided  because  of 
that,  and  went  to  other  sites.  We  wouldn't  do  that  today. 


498 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Scolman:  I  am  not  aware,  but  I'm  not  sure  I  would  have  been 
aware,  of  us  ever,  ever  deciding  that  a  hole  was  not  suitable  for  an 
event  in  the  days  before  Baneberry,  other  than  one  time.  Carl 
Keller,  who  was  in  the  containment  business  for  Los  Alamos  in  those 
days,  became  concerned  over  an  event  in  Area  4.  I  don't  remember 
the  name,  but  it  was  a  reasonably  high  yield  shot  which  was  to  be 
fired  fairly  close  to  the  basement  rocks,  to  the  dolomite.  Carl  was 
convinced  that  we  would  generate  enough  C02  that  it  could  not  be 
contained  in  the  overlying  rock.  And  he  heckled  us  sufficiently  that 
we  finally  moved  the  event  to  another  location. 

App:  In  1971  Bob  Brownlee  hired  me,  Tom  Cook,  and  Tom 
Bennion  to  start  up  the  calculational  effort  for  containment.  We 
weren't  interested  in  developing  our  own  codes,  not  at  all.  We 
wanted  to  get  something  that  somebody  else  had,  and  if  we  had  to 
convert  it  for  our  use,  fine.  Tom  Cook  and  I  drew  straws  to  see  who 
would  concentrate  on  which  codes.  We  went  by  Labs,  and  Tom  got 
Livermore.  Tom  got  the  1-D  SOC  code  from  Livermore,  and  the 
2-D  TENSOR  code  as  well.  I  got  the  WONDY  and  TOODY  codes 
from  Sandia. 

We  evaluated  and  benchmarked  the  four  codes,  to  determine 
which  would  be  the  most  appropriate  for  us.  We  chose  Livermore's 
SOC,  and  Sandia's  TOODY.  We  also  used  WONDY  to  a  limited 
extent.  Things  evolved  from  there.  SOC  went  by  the  wayside  after 
a  number  of  years  because,  although  it  had  a  lot  of  containment  lore 
behind  it,  and  was  an  excellent  code,  it  was  written  in  a  language 
called  LRLTRAN.  When  the  Cray  machines  arrived,  LRLTRAN  was 
not  implemented,  so  SOC  no  longer  worked.  Actually,  Charles 
Snell,  who  now  works  here  at  Los  Alamos,  but  who  did  work  at 
Livermore,  has  it  running  again,  on  our  machines.  He  liked  it,  and 
he  converted  it  from  LRLTRAN  into  standard  FORTRAN. 

The  TOODY  code  has  actually  been  our  mainstay.  It's  what 
I've  primarily  used  for  modeling  purposes,  with  a  lot  of  modifica¬ 
tions  to  fit  our  particular  needs.  It's  now  more  of  a  special  purpose 
code  for  ground  shock  modeling  than  it  was  at  Sandia.  We're  in  the 
process  of  benchmarking  other,  newer  codes  against  it,  but  I  haven't 
found  any  that  are  a  substantial  improvement.  It  has  archaic  coding. 
It  has  twenty  year  old  architecture,  based  on  the  CDC  6600  system. 
It's  hard  sometimes  to  part  with  old  friends.  I  know  the  innards  of 
it;  another  reason  for  not  wanting  to  part  with  it. 


Codes  and  Calculations 


499 


Carothers:  Billy,  when  you  entered  the  containment  business 
in  1 968  Livermore  was  no  longer  doing  tunnel  events,  but  vertical 
line-of-sight  shots  were  being  done  from  time  to  time.  Were  there 
any  people  in  the  Laboratory  doing  theoretical  or  calculationa!  work 
on  containment  related  problems?  Things  such  as  flow  in  the  pipes, 
or  ground  shock  closure  of  the  pipes? 

Hudson:  I  wasn't  aware  of  any  pipe  closure  calculations.  I 
think  they  were  starting  to  do  them,  but  I  have  the  feeling  that  was 
really  in  its  infancy.  There  had  been  a  very  little  bit  done  in  terms 
of  using  the  same  codes  that  are  used  to  design  bombs  to  predict 
how  a  pipe  would  behave  and  close.  All  that  started  at  very  nearly 
the  same  time  as  the  containment  group  was  formed.  We  started 
then  a  program  of  code  development  for  pipe  behavior,  in  concert 
with  the  folks  at  S-Cubed,  and  also  in  concert  with  some  folks  from 
Los  Alamos.  For  several  years  there  was  a  fair  amount  of  effort 
expended  on  code  development,  and  in  trying  to  describe  how  pipes 
really  close. 

Olsen:  The  codes  that  were  available  in  the  beginning  were  not 
very  good  for  that  type  of  thing.  They  were  basically  derived  from 
the  device  codes.  The  early  containment  calculations  were  essen¬ 
tially  all  on  front-end  things,  and  at  that  time  the  device  codes  were 
used  for  that.  We  didn't  really  have  anything  beyond  that,  except 
for  some  engineering  codes  that  looked  at  loadings  on  pipes,  and 
how  hard  will  you  hit  a  valve  assembly  and  will  it  hold  up  to  40  g's 
of  acceleration,  and  that  kind  of  thing.  We  did  a  lot  by  the  seat  of 
our  pants. 

There  wasn't  really  any  way  to  caculate  pipe  flow.  We  pretty 
much  had  to  go  in  and  make  measurements  to  see  what  regime  we 
were  looking  at.  We  tried  to  do  some  calculations  on  pipe  flow,  but 
in  my  opinion  there  never  was  any  really  usable  code  for  that.  The 
closest  was  a  code  called  PUFFL.  If  you  diddled  enough  of  the  many 
parameters  in  it  you  could  get  it  to  match  things,  but  as  a  predictive 
capability  it  was  pretty  close  to  useless.  It  was  sort  of  one  step  better 
than  back  of  the  envelope  calculations.  For  example,  if  you  knew 
what  the  burst  strength  of  a  pipe  was,  you  could  sort  of  say  that  if 
you  put  that  pressure  in  the  bottom  of  the  pipe  section,  and  the  pipe 
opens  up,  you  couldn't  transmit  more  than  that  to  the  top  of  the 
pipe,  because  the  pipe  would  open  up  and  dump  the  flow  into  the 
medium.  That's  the  kind  of  arguments  we  used. 


500  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

We  would  do  things  like  put  accelerometers  on  valve  housings 
to  find  out  what  kind  of  input  the  valve  was  seeing,  and  how  it 
responded.  We  measured  things  like  that,  because  we  didn't  have 
much  in  the  way  of  a  design  or  predictive  capability  for  the  dynamic 
environments,  especially  where  there  were  multiple  loadings  on 
different  time  scales.  For  instance,  on  a  valve  there's  a  shock 
running  up  the  steel  pipe  at  one  velocity,  then  ground  shock,  with 
a  different  wave  shape,  at  a  slower  velocity.  And  somewhere  in 
there  is  a  loading  from  flow  in  the  pipe  hitting  the  closures.  So, 
there  is  this  multiple  loading  on  things,  and  we  didn't  have  any  first 
principles  way  of  attacking  that.  We  did  it  empirically,  which  is  why 
there  was  the  emphasis  on  diagnostics  in  the  early  days. 

Keller:  On  Monero  and  some  other  events,  Io  and  behold,  the 
radiation  monitors  in  the  holes  showed  the  gas  was  going  by  the  coal- 
tar  plugs.  This  absolute  seal  in  the  casing  was  not  there.  And  the 
pressures  that  were  measured  that  were  driving  gas  by  those  coal  tar 
plugs  were  modest;  forty-five  psi  or  so.  It  was  at  that  time  that  it 
was  clear  we  needed  a  code  to  evaluate  gas  flow,  because  gas  flow 
is  a  big  deal  in  stemming,  and  in  containment  in  general. 

And  so  AI  Davis  wrote  a  1-D  gas  flow  code  based  on  Darcy's 
equations.  In  a  period  of  a  couple  of  months  we  had  that  1  -D  gas 
flow  code.  I  said  to  AI,  "But  we  need  to  evaluate  uncased  holes,  so 
we  need  a  2-D  code."  He  said,  "Oh,  it  will  take  a  year  to  write  a 
2-D  gas-flow  code."  And  I  said,  "Come  on,  AI.  I  just  saw  what  you 
did  for  1  -D.  We  can  do  it  in  a  month."  He  said,  "Never.  Never." 
So  I  wrote  the  equations,  and  gave  them  to  John  Stewart.  John 
Stewart  programmed  them,  I  put  in  all  the  input-output  statements, 
corrected  the  errors  in  the  original  program,  and  John  debugged  it. 
In  one  month  we  had  an  operating  2-D  gas  flow  code.  It  was  called 
JACTS,  John  and  Carls  TDC. 

With  that  we  were  able  to  evaluate  the  differences  between  the 
cased  holes  and  uncased  holes.  I  took  the  Monero  results,  where  we 
had  like  five  pressure  measurements  in  the  cased  hole,  with  the  top 
two  above  the  coal-tar  plugs.  And  I  took  the  driving  conditions  at 
the  bottom  as  the  boundary  condition,  and  calculated  a  1  -D  gas  flow 
up  the  hole.  From  that  I  deduced  the  kind  of  permeability  you  had 
to  have  in  the  plugs  in  order  to  to  get  those  volumes  and  pressures 
of  gas  above  them. 


Codes  and  Calculations 


501 


Then  I  hypothesized  that  the  casing  was  perforated.  To  do  that 
I  just  removed  some  of  the  no-flow  boundaries  on  that  casing  and 
let  the  gas  flow  out  into  the  medium.  And  with  that  I  proved  to 
everyone's  satisfaction  that  the  amount  of  gas  that  you  actually 
released  out  of  this  uncased  hole  was  trivial,  and  yet  there  was  an 
enormous  drop  in  the  gas  pressure  that  was  driving  against  the 
stemming  column.  So,  there  wasn't  a  containment  argument  any 
more  about  why  uncased  holes  weren't  appropriate,  and  Los 
Alamos  folded  on  the  issue  of  uncased  holes.  Another  concern  was 
that  the  holes  wouldn't  be  stable  enough,  and  would  fall  in  during 
the  device  emplacement,  but  Livermore  had  already  proven  that 
that  wasn't  a  big  concern  at  all. 

Carothers:  The  code  you  wrote  must  have  been  for  noncon¬ 
densable  gases. 

Keller:  Right.  The  ]ACTS  code  is  for  noncondensable  flow, 
and  you  can  still  use  it  for  lots  of  things,  but  the  next  thing  that  was 
clearly  needed  was  a  steam-flow  code.  You  need  to  treat  the  cavity 
gas  with  a  condensable-flow  code  because  the  cavity  gas  was  thought 
to  be  mainly  steam,  and  that's  not  the  same  as  the  noncondensable 
gas  that  the  codes  calculated.  There  were  all  these  arguments  in  the 
TEP  about  what  the  ramifications  were  of  the  condensable  nature  of 
steam. 

It  took  me  a  year  to  write  the  KRAK  code.  I  had  never  written 
a  computer  code  before  in  my  life,  and  the  KRAK  code  took  three 
thousand  cards  or  so.  It  was  a  monster  compared  to  the  JACTS 
code.  So,  I  had  to  begin  to  be  really  organized  in  my  programming. 
And,  I  had  to  learn  all  the  thermodynamics  of  steam,  because  KRAK 
included  a  full  flow  of  condensation  of  steam  in  two  dimensions.  It 
did  not  assume  local  thermodynamic  equilibrium.  It  treated  the 
difference  between  the  fluid  temperature  and  the  rock  temperature, 
and  the  heat  exchange  between  them.  It  was  an  explicit  finite 
difference  code,  so  it  was  easy  to  add  to  or  change. 

When  I  finally  got  it  written  I  did  a  calculation  which  showed 
that  condensable  flow  from  the  cavity  to  the  walls  got  nowhere. 
Steam  did  flow  into  the  wall,  and  it  actually  got  in  quite  a  ways,  very 
quickly.  Then  it  condensed  and  clogged  up  the  pore  space  with  the 
condensate.  That  throttled  subsequent  flow,  and  from  there  it  just 
crept  along  as  it  pushed  this  slug  of  water  on  ahead.  And  that  slug 


502 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


got  longer  and  longer  as  condensation  continued.  So,  condensable 
porous  flow  from  a  cavity  was  not  a  containment  concern.  It  wasn't 
even  a  concern  in  the  stemming,  generally  speaking. 

KRAK  was  slow,  because  it  was  very  detailed.  The  idea  was 
that  while  it  would  be  so  detailed  that  it  would  be  too  slow  to  ever 
be  very  useful,  you  would  teach  yourself  with  the  code  what 
approximations  were  appropriate,  and  then  you  could  relax  to  a 
more  useful  speed  in  a  simplified  version.  It  still  runs,  with  the  same 
full-blown  modeling,  I  guess. 

Carothers:  Well,  the  machines  get  faster. 

Keller:  Yes,  the  machines  got  faster,  but  it  was  still  slow.  It  was 
dreadfully  slow.  Brian  Travis  took  it  over  after  I  left  the  Lab.  He 
worked  for  me  one  summer,  the  last  summer  I  was  at  Los  Alamos, 
and  so  finally  a  professional  programmer  got  his  hands  on  it,  and  he 
speeded  it  up  a  lot.  He  also  gave  me  the  idea  of  using  an  implicit 
solution  for  the  crack  flow.  AI  Davis  was  sort  of  the  chief  physicist 
consultant  on  the  KRAK  code,  and  AI's  attitude  generally  was, 
"Well,  it's  going  to  be  real  hard  to  do  that."  Mine  was,  "Come  on, 
AI.  Let's  do  it.  Tell  me  what  the  physics  is  and  we'll  do  it."  So, 
we  got  along  very  well.  AI  kept  me  correct  with  the  physics,  and 
I  got  him  to  hurry. 

The  next  thing  that  was  obviously  needed  then  was  a  calcula¬ 
tion  of  the  greater  threat,  and  that  was  that  threat  which  had  been 
witnessed  in  Bandicoot,  Pike,  and  Baneberry,  where  a  fissure 
propagated  from  the  cavity  to  the  surface.  In  other  words,  a 
hydraulic  fracture.  So  I  added  the  hydrofrac  option  to  the  KRAK 
code,  and  it's  still  being  used. 

Kunkle:  When  I  showed  up  here  in  April  of  1980,  to  begin 
work  at  Los  Alamos,  my  security  clearance  was  still  not  through 
being  issued,  but  it  was  only  a  month  before  it  was.  I  started  work 
down  at  the  G  Division  headquarters  in  White  Rock,  working  on  the 
KRAK  code,  which  is  a  multi-phase,  multimedia,  steam-driven 
hydrofracture  code.  AI  Davis  and  Brian  Travis  were  working  on 
KRAK  at  that  time.  Carl  Keller  had  initiated  this  code  back  in  1974, 
with  a  code  called  ]ACTS,  but  he  had  left  to  go  to  DNA  field 
command,  to  lead  their  containment  effort. 


Codes  and  Calculations 


503 


We  were  trying  to  develop  that  code  into  an  actual  working 
code.  At  the  time  I  first  started  it  would  simply  not  run  calculations. 
Integrals  would  not  converge,  derivatives  would  blowup;  there  were 
the  normal  programming  type  of  problems.  I  spent  most  of  the 
summer  of  1 980  working  with  Brian  Travis,  running  problems  just 
to  get  an  answer.  We  were  trying  to  develop  the  physics  involved 
in  the  KRAK  code  so  we  could  get  answers  we  thought  might  be 
right. 

How  codes  and  calculations  are  used  today  varies  from  organi¬ 
zation  to  organization.  And,  the  importance  of  the  results  of  the 
calculations  varies  as  well.  The  Livermore  and  Los  Alamos  events 
in  stemmed  emplacement  holes  seem  to  require  little  more  than 
empirical  rules  to  select  a  depth  of  burial.  The  DNA  tunnel  events 
involve  the  interaction  of  many  of  the  phenomena  produced  by  the 
detonation,  and  extensive  calculations  are  done  on  how  the  experi¬ 
mental  hardware,  including  the  line-of-sight  pipe,  will  be  affected. 
The  results  of  the  caculations  done  often  cause  changes  in  a  particu¬ 
lar  design. 

App:  We  normally  don't  run  calculations  for  every  event, 
although  that's  really  not  a  bad  idea  just  to  keep  in  practice,  or  to 
see  if  certain  things  pop  up  that  are  unrealistic  in  the  calculation,  or 
that  might  be  suggestive  of  a  problem  we  didn't  anticipate.  But 
normally  we  do  not  work  in  that  mode.  Usually  it's  a  specific 
problem.  For  example,  Dahlhart.  We  had  a  nearby  pipe,  a  fish,  that 
was  stuck  in  a  nearby  exploratory  hole.  We  didn't  really  know  the 
condition  of  the  pipe,  and  we  were  having  a  difficult  time  finding  out 
what  the  condition  was.  The  worry  was  that  it  was  open,  and  passing 
through  the  region  we  regard  as  the  residual  stress  field  it  could 
provide  a  path  for  cavity  gas  to  get  high  into  the  geologic  section. 
We  performed  some  normal  ground  shock  calculations,  and  used  the 
shock  levels  to  determine  whether  or  not  the  pipe  would  be  closed 
off,  and  how  far  it  would  be  displaced. 

That's  an  example  of  how  we  used  the  code  on  a  specific  event. 
We  don't  use  calculations  for  absolute  predictions  —  in  fact,  I  don't 
even  like  that  word  in  association  with  calculations.  I  prefer  to  use 
them  as  an  analysis  tool,  as  part  of  the  overall  analysis. 


504  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Carothers:  If  the  containment  scientist  says,  "1  want  these 
calculations  run  for  this  event,"  how  would  that  be  done  at  Los 
Alamos? 

House:  As  Fred  said,  typically  we  don't  do  calculations  on  the 
events.  There's  no  burning  need  for  them  unless  we  have  some 
peculiar  geometry  in  terms  of  emplacement.  Or,  a  situation  where 
we  might  want  to  look  at  the  effect  of  the  structural  situation,  such 
as  a  fault,  or  scarps,  and  so  forth  and  so  on.  The  containment 
scientist  will,  if  necessary,  call  for  caiculational  work  to  be  done  on 
whatever  particular  aspect  he  or  she  deems  necessary.  That's 
usually  done  hand  in  glove  with  the  phenomenologist. 

So,  we  do  not  do  calculations  routinely.  We  have  a  situation 
that's  a  little  different  from  Livermore's.  I  believe  that  Lawrence 
Livermore  Laboratory's  John  Rambo  is  the  designated,  and  dedi¬ 
cated  containment  calculation  guy.  I  remember  John  telling  me 
once,  "Well,  I  take  a  look  at  everything."  And  if  he  thinks 
something  needs  to  be  done,  he  may  contact  the  containment 
scientist,  or  vice  versa.  In  our  Laboratory  we  don't  have  either  a 
designated,  or  dedicated  person.  We  have  people  who  are  sup¬ 
ported  by  the  containment  program  in  the  caiculational  venue,  and 
who  are  required  to  be  responsive  to  needs,  but  they  are  on  a  call¬ 
out  basis.  In  some  cases  the  phenomenologist  will  do  the  caiculational 
work  if  it's  in  that  person's  particular  area  of  expertise.  Tom 
Kunkle,  for  instance,  runs  our  KRAK  code.  Wendee  Brunish  runs 
a  code  called  TOODY. 

Rambo:  Today,  calculations  are  kind  of  nice  to  use  to  get 
things  through  the  CEP,  but  nobody  wants  to  look  at  the  negative 
side  of  them.  Nobody  wants  to  say,  "Look,  we're  going  to  have  to 
move  the  site,"  or  do  this,  that,  or  the  other  because  we  have  a 
calculation  that  doesn't  look  quite  right.  Fred  App,  from  Los 
Alamos,  says,  "Well,  we  never  use  calculations  any  more  to  decide 
about  a  shot.  If  it's  negative  we  don't  say  we're  going  to  make  any 
big  changes." 

Sometimes  I  see  problems  in  the  calculations  that  I  don't 
necessarily  bring  up,  because  the  system  has  sort  of  bypassed  them 
atthispoint.  Calculations  don't  mean  much  today.  The  containment 
scientist  can  elect  or  not  elect  to  look  at  calculations,  if  he  so  desires. 
He  can  say,  "I  don't  need  any  calculations.  I  think  past  experience 
is  fine."  And  so  even  though  I  may  have  a  different  idea  on  that, 


Codes  and  Calculations 


505 


it  doesn't  matter,  and  it  can  stop  right  there.  So,  I  see  the  potential 
for  going  past  a  bad  one  -  -  one  that  may  show  an  indicator,  a  blip, 
in  a  calculation  as  a  potential  problem.  That  never  even  gets 
discussed. 

The  calculator  has  his  own  view  of  things.  What  I've  discovered 
over  the  years  is  that  minor  differences,  or  changes  in  certain 
properties  around  the  cavity,  and  certain  positions  of  layers,  can 
make  a  big  difference  in  a  calculation. 

Carothers:  I  have  talked  to  various  DNA  people  who  say, 
"Well,  you  know,  one  of  the  things  that's  really  kind  of  baffling  is 
we  have  made  what  appear  to  be  small  changes  in  our  designs,  and 
we  get  big  differences  in  things."  As  Ed  Peterson  put  it,  "I  cannot 
understand  it  in  the  science  that  I  learned,  because  if  someone  came 
to  me  and  said,  'We're  going  to  make  a  ten  percent  change  in  this,' 
1  would  say,  'Well,  we  only  guessed  at  the  first  one,  so  what  can  ten 
percent  do  on  the  next  one?'" 

Rambo:  Yes.  I  see  sensitivities  also.  The  difficulty  in 
answering  the  question  has  to  do  with  which  problem  you  are  talking 
about.  There  are  so  many  changes  you  can  make,  and  I'm  not  sure 
which  ones  do  make  a  difference.  Let  me  give  you  an  example.  Take 
Galena,  which  I  presented  to  the  CEP.  The  approach  to  it  was,  from 
the  people  who  look  at  geology  and  look  at  material  properties, 
"Oh,  it  looks  like  everything  else  we've  presented  before.  We've 
got  all  these  different  Grouse  Canyon  layers  that  we've  shot  next 
to."  But  when  I  ran  the  calculation  on  it,  and  by  the  way  I  did  it  on 
my  own,  I  said,  "I  think  you  people  may  have  some  problems.  I 
think  we  ought  to  look  at  it."  The  containment  scientist  didn't  want 
to  do  that. 

Carothers:  It's  like  doing  a  test  with  a  weapon  from  the 
stockpile.  If  it  works  we  won't  have  learned  anything,  because  it's 
supposed  to  work,  and  if  it  doesn't  work  They  will  know  that,  and 
that's  terrible.  Similarly,  your  calculations  will  show  the  site  is  all 
right,  which  we  already  know,  or  it  won't  look  all  right,  and  then 
you'll  give  us  trouble. 

Rambo:  You've  put  your  finger  on  exactly  what  I  go  through 
sometimes.  That's  the  biggest  issue  about  calculations  -  - 1  really  am 
not  independent  of  the  total  system.  And  so  I  have  this  anchor 
around  me,  that  you  might  call  wanting  to  know  the  truth. 


506 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


And  that  brings  up  the  importance  of  the  CEP,  because  that  is 
the  last  decision  making  process.  It  isn't  the  last,  but  it's  close  to 
the  last  decision  making  process  that  takes  place.  As  we  continue 
with  this  process  it's  going  to  be  harder  and  harder  to  move  to  a 
different  hole,  if  that  was  something  that  should  be  done,  because 
the  money  situation  is  probably  going  to  get  worse.  I  think  that  puts 
even  more  responsibility  on  the  CEP  to  make  good  judgments  on 
these  kinds  of  things. 

Carothers:  Well,  the  CEP  assumes  good  faith  on  the  part  of  the 
Laboratories.  Part  of  that  assumption  of  good  faith  is  that  the 
sponsor  has  looked,  seriously  and  honestly,  at  the  the  problems 
which  might  be  associated  with  the  shot  that  is  being  brought 
forward.  And,  they  are  going  to  bring  those  to  the  CEP  meeting  and 
discuss  them,  and  why  they  believe  any  such  problems  have  been 
satisfactorily  resolved.  If  they  know  of  a  question,  and  they  do  not 
bring  it  to  the  CEP  for  consideration,  they  are  willfully  subverting 
the  process. 

Rambo:  Well,  there  seems  to  be  this  idea  that  if  you  run  a 
calculation  there's  something  wrong  with  the  site.  And  that  almost 
stops  the  process  occasionally.  It's  hard  to  get  away  with  running 
a  calculation  on  something,  because  the  containment  scientist  is 
afraid.  "Did  you  run  calculations  on  this?"  "Well,  yes."  "Why  did 
you  do  that?  What  was  wrong  with  the  site  that  you  ran  calculations 
on  it?" 

The  CEP  does  have  the  power,  however,  to  demand  a  calcula¬ 
tion,  if  they  know  enough  ahead  of  time.  If  you  have  somebody  or 
some  people  on  the  Panel  who  say,  "This  doesn't  look  right,  and  we 
want  to  know  more  about  it  or  we  won't  pass  on  it,"  the  calculations 
would  be  done. 

Carothers:  It's  my  understanding  that  these  days  there's  a  fair 
degree  of  collaboration  between  the  Los  Alamos  and  Livermore 
containment  people.  Does  it  ever  happen  that  Los  Alamos  would 
say,  "You  know,  you  really  ought  to  calculate  this  and  see  what  it 
says."  Does  that  happen? 

Rambo:  Yes  and  no.  This  usually  takes  place  in  communica¬ 
tions  before  the  CEP,  in  which  we  send  each  other  questions.  That 
has  happened  occasionally.  But,  it's  never  happened  that  we've 
demanded  calculations  from  them.  I  have  submitted  a  question  and 


Codes  and  Calculations 


507 


said,  "Have  you  run  calculations  on  this,  that,  and  the  other?" 
maybe  twice.  But  our  side  never  demands  any  calculations  from  Los 
Alamos,  or  at  least  it  doesn't  seem  as  though  we  have,  and  we  have 
very  rarely  if  ever  run  a  calculation  on  one  of  their  sites. 

Conversely,  Los  Alamos  has  run  calculations  on  our  sites 
several  times.  I  don't  know  why  this  imbalance  exists,  but  I  think 
it's  the  perception  of  calculations  from  different  sides  of  the  fence. 
It's  as  though  some  of  the  management  on  our  side  is  saying,  "Well, 
calculations  don't  mean  much.  They're  useful  to  sell  to  the  CEP." 
When  we  run  up  against  a  negative  calculation  we're  maybe  a  little 
more  leery,  but  we're  still  saying  the  calculations  by  themselves 
don't  make  a  big  difference. 

It's  good  to  be  aware  of  that,  because  the  people  making  the 
decision  at  the  CEP  are  much  more  savvy  about  this  process  than 
they  used  to  be  in  the  old  days.  I  think  they're  able  to  say,  "Well, 
this  is  a  negative  calculation,  but  there  are  other  factors  that  take 
place  that  have  to  do  with  containment."  i  think  that  has  certainly 
changed  over  the  years,  but  we're  still  living  with  the  remnants  of 
the  ideas  that  if  you  show  any  bad  calculation  to  the  Panel,  they  may 
give  us  a  B  or  C.  I  think  the  Panel  is  a  little  more  savvy  in  being  able 
to  make  intelligent  judgments. 

Carothers:  When  you  talk  about  calculations,  do  you  do  them 
for  events  of  the  various  yields?  Do  you,  for  instance,  do  calcula¬ 
tions  on  the  low  yield  events? 

Rambo:  Sure.  Galena  was  an  example  of  that.  The  yield  was 
not  high.  The  layers  went  from  full  saturation  up  to  this  Grouse 
Canyon  layer  that  was  enormously  porous.  That  to  me  was  a  flag 
that  said,  "Look,  this  is  at  the  extreme,  and  you  ought  to  run  a 
calculation."  Eventually  I  did,  somewhat  on  my  own,  and  that  was 
presented  to  the  Panel.  If  I  had  just  laid  back  and  not  done  anything, 
that  calculation  would  not  have  been  done. 

What  was  kind  of  interesting  about  it  was  that  it  was  different 
from  everything  else  I've  seen  in  terms  of  Grouse  Canyon  related 
calculations.  There  was  a  tremendous  change  in  the  attenuation 
rate.  And  that  produced  this  focusing  effect  that  I  talked  about  - 
-  the  flattening  of  the  out-going  wave.  For  a  normal  residual  stress 
you  like  things  to  go  out  spherically  and  come  back  spherically  so 
it  tends  to  close  everything  up  in  a  spherical  sense.  When  everything 
runs  up  as  a  plane  wave,  and  comes  back  that  way  from  the  topside, 


508 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


you  don't  get  a  big  residual  stress.  The  max  cred  calculation  on 
Galena  didn't  show  a  residual  stress.  Nobody  knew  that  at  the  CEP 
because  it  wasn't  asked.  The  design  yield  showed  a  very  weak  ten, 
twenty  bar  stress  along  the  stemming  column. 

Carothers:  Refering  to  the  Panel  again,  I  think  they  can  make 
intelligent  judgments  if  they  have  the  information  upon  which  to 
base  those  judgments.  And  that's  the  point  that  concerns  me.  If 
they  don't  have  all  the  information,  such  as  not  being  informed  of 
your  calculations  on  Galena,  how  can  they  make  an  informed 
judgment? 

Rambo:  Well,  you  have  to  remember  that  certainly  our  models 
for  looking  at  containment  calculations  leave  some  things  to  be 
desired.  I  see  some  of  that  after  looking  at  comparisons  between 
real  data  and  the  calculations.  I'm  not  trying  to  sell  calculations 
necessarily,  because  I  know  that  there  are  calculations  that  may  be 
misleading,  and  that  some  of  them  have  been  misleading.  But  in 
spite  of  that,  we  don't  do  too  bad  a  job. 

There's  always  been  a  tendency  for  there  to  be  higher  rise  times 
in  our  calculations,  compared  to  the  measurements.  It's  like  the 
ground  is  a  bigger  absorber  than  we  calculate.  But  I  think  in  terms 
of  residual  stress  we  tend  to  capture  some  of  that,  and  yet  there  are 
plenty  of  arguments  that  say,  "Gee,  we  don't  think  there's  any 
residual  stress  in  any  of  the  shots."  The  DNA  people  are  starting 
to  say  those  kind  of  things. 

The  calculators  tend  to  believe  the  reason  the  high  yield  shots 
contain  is  because  there's  a  well  established  residual  stress.  You 
don't  see  anything  going  through  cables,  the  man-made  phenom¬ 
enon  of  the  hole  is  very  small,  and  the  residual  stress  is  very  thick 
compared  to  the  pressure  in  the  cavity. 

Now,  in  the  calculations  you  always  seem  to  generate,  for  the 
same  strength  rock,  the  same  cavity  pressure.  On  a  low  yield  shot 
there  is  less  protective  distance  than  there  is  on  a  high  yield  shot. 
When  you  get  to  low  yield  shots  the  man-made  phenomenon 
become  large  with  respect  to  other  things,  and  that's  been  one  of 
the  ideas  behind  why  low  yield  shots  don't  have  as  good  a  history 
as  the  high  yield  ones. 


Codes  and  Calculations 


509 


But  there  is  Riola  and  Agrini.  Looking  at  the  geology  of  those 
two  shots,  there  was  just  nothing  there  to  calculate.  There  weren't 
any  nearby  layers,  and  calculations  would  not  have  done  any  good 
because  they  would  only  have  shown  a  nice  residual  stress  field. 

Carothers:  If  you  look  at  those  two  events,  Riola  I  put  down 
as  an  engineering  failure.  There  were  plugs  which  were  supposed  to 
be  stemming  platforms,  but  the  one  that  was  called  on  to  actually 
do  that  failed,  and  was  abraded  away  by  the  stemming  which  fell  past 
it,  so  it  didn't  do  the  job  it  was  supposed  to  do.  On  Agrini  there 
was  a  strange,  very  deep  crater  which  must  depend  on  details  of  the 
geology  that  we'll  probably  never  know. 

Rambo:  That's  right.  It's  as  though  there  are  three  aspects  to 
this;  there's  the  cavity  gas,  and  there's  the  residual  stress  problem. 
But  the  third  thing  that  can  happen  is  a  strange  collapse,  or  some 
geological  path  that  takes  material  to  the  surface.  And,  number 
three  can  bypass  number  two.  If  there  is  an  unusual  collapse,  it  may 
not  matter  whether  there  was  a  residual  stress  there  in  the  first 
place,  or  what  the  calculations  showed. 

Duff:  If  we  are  to  make  progress  in  some  of  these  containment 
issues,  I  think  we  need  to  think  about  how  we  calculate  things.  In 
the  containment  community  we  have  a  world  view  which  assumes 
that  a  one  dimensional,  spherical  expansion  is  the  proper  view  of  an 
explosion.  That's  where  it  ail  starts. 

A  zero-order  approximation  is  a  1  -D  calculation.  If  you  want 
to  know  about  the  effects  of  in-situ  stress,  or  lithographic  stress,  you 
go  to  a  2-D  calculation  and  put  in  gravity.  And  what  do  you  know? 
You  get  a  slightly  different  result. 

So,  we  start  with  a  one  dimensional  world.  I'm  suggesting  that 
perhaps  ground  motion,  for  instance,  in  the  DNA  context,  is 
governed  by  the  scale  of  a  fault  or  bedding  plane  type  displacement, 
which  is  large  compared  to  the  cell  size  of  a  computation.  Or 
certainly  large  compared  to  the  size  of  the  core  we're  going  to 
squeeze  in  a  press,  but  small  compared  to  the  final  cavity  dimen¬ 
sions.  And  it  may  be  that  the  one  dimensional  approximation  in  this 
case  isn't  even  a  good  zero-order  approximation  to  what's  going  on. 

I  don't  know  what  that  means.  I  certainly  don't  know  how  to 
calculate  it,  or  how  to  think  about  doing  such  a  calculation.  And 
that's  something  that  has  been  thrown  at  me  every  time  I  make  this 


510 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


kind  of  an  argument;  that  we  really  ought  to  open  our  minds  to  think 
about  something  beyond  where  we've  been  before.  They  say, 
"Well,  gosh,  we  don't  know  how  to  calculate  it."  If  that's  the  limit 
of  our  world,  and  the  limit  of  our  world  view,  we're  sure  not  going 
to  change  that  view.  And  we  may  not  learn  the  truth. 

Carothers:  May  I  rephrase  what  I  think  you  said?  You're 
saying  that  the  world  is  inhomogeneous  on  a  scale  which  is  large 
compared  to  your  computational  meshes,  but  small  compared  to 
the  region  in  which  the  phenomena  important  to  containment  take 
place. 

Duff:  Perhaps.  1  have  to  emphasize  the  perhaps  in  all  this.  I've 
made  a  point  in  my  career,  and  I've  tried  to  make  the  point  here  that 
I  was  interested  in  trying  to  develop  an  understanding  of  what  was 
going  on,  more  than  concentrating  on  getting  the  next  shot  off,  or 
trying  to  meet  a  schedule.  It's  in  this  context  of  trying  to  understand 
something  that  I  think  the  containment  community,  and  I  as  a 
significant  member  of  that  community,  have  failed. 

And  that  part  of  the  failure  has  been  in  not  recognizing  the 
lessons  that  were  learned  from  Rainier.  One  reason  for  me  making 
this  point  was  that  within  the  last  few  years  I  went  back  and  reread 
the  Livermore  reports  on  Rainier.  They  are  kind  of  an  interesting 
thing  to  look  at.  I  commend  them  to  the  Panel.  That  event  was 
extensively,  and  very  carefully  reentered  and  studied  as  an  example 
of  an  underground  test. 

There  is  a  statement  in  the  reports  that  the  cavity  is  reasonably 
well  formed,  and  well  defined.  It's  pretty  spherical.  And  for  a 
meter  or  so  outside  of  the  cavity  the  rock  seems  to  be  plastically 
deformed,  and  moves  in  pretty  much  a  1-D  sense.  Beyond  that, 
ground  motion  is  dominated  by  slips  on  faults,  on  bedding  planes, 
and  on  fractures.  Within  a  meter  or  so  of  the  cavity  !  That  is,  to 
me,  evidence  in  the  books,  from  the  first  shot,  that  says  perhaps  the 
one  dimensional  world  view  is  not  the  proper  world  view. 

Carothers:  Good  out  to  a  cavity  radius  plus  a  meter,  maybe? 

Duff:  Yes.  But  if  you  have  a  stemming  column  which  goes  out 
a  little  further,  you  may  not  get  the  right  answers.  But  it  is  very  hard 
to  get  real  data,  and  actual  observations.  And  we  deal  with  the  very 
real  personal  attitudes  of  the  people  in  the  loop.  If  you  think  you 
know  what's  going  on,  and  it  sort  of  works,  and  there's  nothing 


Codes  and  Calculations 


511 


dramatic  that  makes  you  change  your  view,  you  say,  "Gee,  that 
must  be  the  way  it  is."  It  has  been  shown  time  after  time  that  we 
don't  know  that's  the  way  it  is.  As  witness  to  that  look  at  Mighty 
Oak,  or  Mission  Cyber  and  Disko  Elm. 

I  have  criticized  continuum-mechanics  based  codes  as  inappro¬ 
priate  because  the  basic  assumption  that  points  that  start  out  close 
together  stay  close  together  during  the  motion  is  not,  apparently, 
what  is  observed  in  the  field.  Therefore,  I  have  recommended  that 
effort  be  directed  towards  the  development  of  a  three-dimensional 
discrete  element  calcuiational  technique. 

Discrete-element  is  basically  a  two-dimensional  calcuiational 
procedure  put  together  some  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago  by  a  man 
named  Peter  Cundall.  He's  now  at  the  University  of  Wisconsin.  The 
technique,  basically,  imagines  that  you  have  interacting  blocks  of 
rock,  which  are  are  defined  preshot,  unfortunately.  Unfortunately 
for  our  case,  because  we  don't  know  what's  in  the  earth  in  any  great 
detail.  But  for  civil  engineering  applications,  for  which  he  devel¬ 
oped  this  technique,  it's  adequate. 

In  such  a  calculation  there  are  predefined  blocks  of  material, 
which  in  the  first  approximation  are  rigid,  so  these  blocks  can 
interact  only  through  interfaces,  where  there  are  frictional  forces 
that  are  defined.  There  have  been  extensions  to  the  theory  to  allow 
elastic  type  distortions  to  occur  also.  The  beauty  of  the  technique 
is  that  one  block  is  free  to  do  whatever  the  forces  that  are  at  play 
ask  it  to  do.  It  can  change  its  neighbors  however  it  wants  to.  It  is 
not  restricted  to  the  continuum-mechanics  assumption  that  there 
are  proximity  relationships  that  are  maintained,  nor  is  it  restricted 
by  the  slip-line  constraints  that  have  sometimes  been  put  into  2-D 
continuum-mechanics  codes  Those,  I  think,  are  always  restricted  to 
one  class  of  boundaries  which  can  slip.  The  ]  lines  can  slip,  or  the 
K  lines  can  slip,  but  not  both  of  them.  In  the  discrete  element  codes 
both  can. 

Let  me  give  you  an  example  of  problems  I  have  seen  calculated, 
on  personal  computers  by  the  way.  We'll  take  a  hopper  containing 
an  arbitrary  array  of  defined  objects;  square  blocks,  round  blocks, 
triangular  blocks,  you  name  it.  They're  sitting  in  the  hopper  under 
gravity.  Remove  a  diaphragm  at  the  bottom  of  the  hopper.  The 
blocks  are  allowed  to  flow  out  under  gravity,  and  they  start  sliding 
down.  One  will  fall  out,  and  another  one  will  fall  out,  and  they  will 


512  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

tumble,  and  fall,  and  they  will  pile  up  and  do  what  they  do  in 
complete  freedom  from  the  constraints  of  usual  continuum-me¬ 
chanics  calculational  procedures. 

Now,  this  calculational  technique  has  been  known,  as  I  said,  for 
fifteen  or  twenty  years.  There  has  been  work  on  it  at  Livermore,  and 
there  has  been  work  on  it,  supported  by  DNA,  through  Waterways 
Experiment  Station.  I  don't  know  that  it  has  been  generalized  to  3- 
D,  but  my  recommendation  is  that  a  serious  effort  be  made  to  try 
to  bring  up  a  practical  and  effective  three-dimensional  discrete 
element  technique. 

Carothers:  My  comment  is  that  the  development  of  calculational 
tools  and  codes  within  the  Laboratories  has  been  dominated,  in  the 
past,  by  the  device  designers.  People  were,  and  are,  intensely 
interested  in  what  happens  inside  a  device  when  you  fire  it.  That's 
where  the  the  big  kids  play.  That's  where  the  interest,  the  money, 
and  the  effort  has  been,  and  so  they  have  developed  very  sophisti¬ 
cated  and  elaborate  ways  to  make  those  calculations.  And  in  a 
device  there  are  no  blocks  moving  around,  or  hydrofractures,  and 
they  are  usually  symmetrical  about  some  axis.  If  you're  just  a  little 
guy  who  comes  along  and  wants  to  do  some  calculations  concerning 
dirt  and  rocks  that  maybe  crack  or  jiggle  around,  you're  probably 
not  going  to  get  a  lot  of  money  to  do  that.  And  so,  maybe  you  adapt 
some  of  those  techniques  that  have  already  been  developed  to  your 
problem.  That  might  be  one  of  the  reasons  that  has  led  to  the 
widespread  use  of  the  continuum-mechanics  techniques  you  de¬ 
scribe. 

Duff:  I  believe  that. 

Carothers:  Chuck,  inherent  in  the  efforts  to  model,  or 
calculate,  the  phenomenology  of  an  underground  detonation,  par¬ 
ticularly  where  you  have  a  line-of-sight  pipe,  there  is  an  enormous 
range  of  time  scales.  Things  important  occur  from  fractions  of  a 
microsecond  to  more  than  many  minutes.  Similarly,  spatially,  you 
have  a  thin  piece  of  iron  which  is  maybe  going  to  do  something  and 
interact  with  things,  and  then  you  have,  if  you  want  to  believe  in 
block  motion,  a  piece  of  rock,  probably  bigger  this  building,  moving 
around. 

Dismukes:  You're  giving  good  reasons  why  the  modeling  is  not 
as  simple  as  one  would  like. 


Codes  and  Calculations 


513 


Carothers:  How  do  you  deal  with  those  things? 

Dismukes:  Not  very  well. 

Carothers:  You  deal  with  it  well  enough  to  be  successful  some 
of  the  time. 

Dismukes:  Apparently.  Or  we're  successful  in  spite  of  our 
ignorance.  That's  always  possible.  It  could  be  that  just  doing 
everything  on  the  back  of  an  envelope  would  work  every  bit  as  well. 
It  doesn't  give  you  a  lot  of  confidence  that  you  know  the  effect  of 
parametric  changes  in  the  design.  We  do  a  lot  of  that  by  the  way 
-  -  not  thinking  the  code  is  giving  us  the  right  answer,  but  that  it  will 
tell  us  what  the  influence  of  design  changes  are.  Hopefully  it  will 
suggest  what's  good  and  bad  when  we  start  changing  things. 

Carothers:  Without  saying  how  good,  or  how  bad. 

Dismukes:  Exactly.  And  that's  the  primary  use  of  the  codes, 
I  think.  I  don't  think  any  of  us  are  deluded  to  the  point  where  we 
think  we're  predicting  exactly  what  happens. 

Carothers:  Where  do  the  codes  come  from?  Do  you  develop 
them? 

Dismukes:  It's  a  mixture.  We've  obtained  some  from  the  Labs. 
One  of  our  early-time  codes  is  really  very  similar  to  Livermore's 
CORONET. 

Carothers:  Your  codes  are  all  basically  two  dimensional,  aren't 
they?  Which  came  first,  the  codes  or  the  pipe? 

Dismukes:  The  codes.  The  codes  were  designed  to  deal  with 
nuclear  devices,  which  really  were  symmetric.  The  codes  came  first, 
because  1  think  we  were  reluctant  to  experiment  with  non-symmet- 
ric  test  configurations  because  we  didn't  know  how  to  calculate 
them. 

Primarily  the  codes  are  two  dimensional.  Certain  radiation 
problems  you  might  do  one  dimensionally  if  you  wanted.  You  could 
put  in  a  little  more  sophistication  because  you  could  put  better 
transport  in  for  some  things.  In  principle  you  can  do  that  in  2-D 
also,  but  it  gets  expensive.  The  problem  with  2-D  codes  is  that  they 
assume  the  world  is  axially  symmetric.  So,  you  get  perfect 
symmetry,  typically  around  the  axis  of  the  line-of-sight  pipe.  That 
would  suggest  that  you  probably  get  more  jetting  and  energy  flow 
in  calculations  than  you  do  in  the  real  world,  because  nothing  is 


514 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


perfectly  symmetric.  Certainly  the  stemming  and  the  placement  of 
the  pipe  in  the  tunnel  is  not  axially  symmetric;  it's  only  quasi-axialiy 
symmetric. 

The  pipe  is  symmetric,  but  it's  not  located  symmetrically.  The 
tunnel  itself  is  not  mined  symmetrically,  and  the  pipe  is  not  placed 
exactly  in  the  center  of  the  tunnel.  There  are  support  structures, 
and  possibly  experiment  stations  on  one  side  and  not  on  the  other, 
and  generally  that's  ignored.  The  codes  are  basically  two  dimen¬ 
sional  codes  that  calculate  cylindrical,  axially  symmetric  kinds  of 
things,  and  there's  no  dependence  on  the  axial  angle. 

Broyles:  I  still  find  myseif  concerned  about  the  role  of 
calculations  and  the  lack  of  what  I  think  of  as  an  appreciation  of  the 
limitations  of  2-D  calculations  versus  a  real  3-D  world.  There  are 
a  number  of  people  on  the  CEP,  and  other  places  also,  who  still  think 
of  2-D  calculations  as  the  ultimate  calculation,  not  recognizing  what 
to  me  is  a  very  serious  limitation  of  2-D  calculations.  That  is  the  fact 
that  in  the  2-D  expansion,  instead  of  a  3-D  one,  you  can,  particu¬ 
larly  in  complex  geometry,  produce  a  calculation  which  can  scare 
you  to  death,  when  there  is  no  reason  in  the  real  world  to  be  scared. 
In  a  3-D  world  things  go  as  1  over  R  cubed  when  you  talk  about 
reflections  and  things  like  that,  instead  as  1  over  R  squared.  I 
suppose  that's  a  minor  point,  because  it  may  cost  you  money  and 
effort  unnecessarily,  but  if  you're  aiming  to  be  conservative  it's  at 
least  in  the  right  direction. 

People  can  certainly  do  better  2-D  calculations  today  than  they 
could  fifteen  years  ago.  They  have  also  learned  to  do  parameter 
studies  with  2-D  calculations  in  a  much  better  way,  and  apply  them 
better.  I  think  an  area  that  can  be  exploited  more  is  that  we  do  have 
3-D  calculational  capabilities  now,  particularly  for  late  time,  slow, 
ground  motion  calculations.  In  many  cases  those  can  be  the 
important  response,  particularly  for  the  tunnel  collapse,  the  up¬ 
heavals,  the  fault  motions. 

Bass:  With  the  thought  in  mind  that  block  motion  could  affect 
the  residual  stress  field,  through  our  DNA  Containment  Advisory 
Team  working  group  we  asked  that  a  certain  problem  be  run,  and 
that  we  be  aprised  of  the  results  of  it.  We  wanted  a  discrete  element 
code  used,  and  S-Cubed  was  tasked  to  do  it.  We  asked  them  to  put 


Codes  and  Calculations 


515 


a  fault  in,  and  see  what  that  does  to  the  stress  cage.  And  indeed, 
those  calculations  show  that  if  the  fault  is  in  the  wrong  place,  it  kills 
the  stress  cage. 

Now,  you  don't  need  a  discrete  element  code  to  do  that.  Any 
finite  difference  code  will  tell  you  the  same  thing.  But  the  finite 
difference  code  will  only  tell  you  about  one  fault.  You  can't  put  in 
several  faults.  With  these  discrete  elements  codes  you  can  put  in 
numerous  faults,  and  address  an  area.  We  have  recommended,  and 
I  think  someday  somebody  will  do  something  about  it,  that  if  a  DNA 
test  area  shows  multiple  faults  in  what  we  call  the  stress  cage  region 
that  should  be  addressed  with  a  discrete  element  code.  I  think  we 
need  to  do  this. 

Certainly  a  finite  element  code  can  go  3-D  a  hell  of  a  lot  easier 
than  a  finite  difference  code.  Sandia  has  some  going;  certainly  a  lot 
of  people  have  some  going,  but  they  are  not  being  used,  as  far  as  I 
can  see.  We're  really  falling  behind  with  what  we  should  be  doing 
with  3-D  codes.  We  have  the  capability  now  to  run  those  codes. 
People  can  still  think,  and  with  the  capabilities  we  have  now  we 
should  be  running  3-D  problems,  and  people  aren't.  All  of  the  3- 
D  calculations  have  just  kind  of  died. 

Patch:  Even  a  1  -D  code  is  useful  in  a  lot  of  material  property 
studies.  It's  fast,  and  it  does  some  of  those  sorts  of  things  pretty 
well.  Almost  all  of  our  serious  work  is  done  in  2-D.  We  do  limited 
work  in  3-D,  and  we're  prepared  to  do  it.  It's  just  that  one  has  to 
be  sure  that  there  is  something  that  is  truly  3-D,  and  that  the  3-D 
effects  are  so  important  that  you  can  either  give  up  on  the  zoning 
resolution  that  you  can  achieve  in  2-D,  or  you  bite  the  bullet  and 
pay  the  cost  of  doing  a  3-D  simulation.  There  are  instances  when 
one  does  that,  but  they're  relatively  rare. 

I  think  the  most  effective  way  to  use  3-D  calculations  is  to  home 
in  on  limited  features.  For  example,  you  could  ask  yourself,  "Does 
it  really  matter  that  the  tunnel  has  a  horseshoe  shape  as  opposed  to 
a  circular  shape  that  the  2-D  code  forces  it  into?"  In  addition  to 
that,  DNA  typically  offsets  the  line-of-sight  pipe.  They  put  it  on  one 
side  of  the  tunnel  so  people  can  walk  on  the  other  side  because  it 
makes  it  nicer  to  work.  So  now  you  have  a  funny  shaped  thing  with 
the  line-of-sight  pipe  set  off  in  one  corner.  Is  that  important? 


516 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


The  way  you  do  that  in  3-D  is  not  to  mock  up  everything  from 
the  zero  room  to  infinity,  but  you  take  a  section  of  it  and  look  to 
see  whether  it  behaves  in  a  sensible  fashion.  You  can  make  a  lot  of 
progress  in  3-D  as  long  you  restrict  yourself  to  a  particular  question. 
What  you  often  times  need  in  3-D  is  to  run  a  benchmark  in  1  -D  or 
2-D,  so  you  can  say  it's  10%  more,  or  it's  100%  more,  or  0.2% 
more.  Many  times,  using  a  3-D  code,  you  get  an  answer,  but  you 
don't  have  any  scale,  so  you  have  to  invent  your  measurement  tool 
to  go  with  it. 

We're  currently  working  on  getting  a  3-D  axial,  and  quasi-axial 
symmetric  code  in  which  things  can  vary  with  the  azimuth.  At  that 
point  I  think  we  can  begin  to  investigate  some  of  the  things  we  see 
with  more  confidence. 

Carothers:  You'd  be  able  to  do  something  like  having  the  wall 
thickness  vary? 

Dismukes:  Yes.  Or  you  could  even  have  a  cross  section  be 
slightly  asymmetrical.  The  problem  with  that  kind  of  code  is  that 
if  you  get  to  large  distances  you  don't  have  good  angular  resolution, 
but  maybe  you  don't  need  it  there.  You  can  put  good  angular 
resolution  where  you  need  it,  near  the  pipe.  I  have  high  hopes  that 
one  day  we'll  be  able  to  do  something  with  that  code.  It's  just  about 
to  come  on  line. 

The  usual  event  in  an  emplacement  hole  doesn't  have  the 
complexities  of  a  line-of-sight  event  in  the  tunnels.  So,  as  Fred  App 
and  ]ohn  Rambo  have  pointed  out,  calculations  of  the  phenomenol¬ 
ogy  following  such  a  detonation  are  not  regarded  as  very  important 
in  the  planning  of  an  event.  And  so,  development  of  better 
calculational  tools  is  not  an  very  high  priority  project  at  the 
Laboratories.  Part  of  the  reason  for  that  is  that  one  could  argue 
better  codes  would  have  to  have  better  input  data,  which  is  not 
availabe,  nor  likely  to  become  available. 

App:  I  think  the  important  thing  is  that  we  are  in  a  very  data- 
limited  environment.  There's  no  doubt  about  that.  And  that's  the 
reason  we're  not  predictive.  We're  not  constrained  by  enough  data. 
We're  data  limited.  I  think  we  have  pretty  strong  analysis  capabili¬ 
ties,  but  we  have  to  always  couch  it  as,  "These  are  the  limits  of  how 
this  rock  might  really  behave."  Or,  "These  are  the  limits  we  might 
have  on  the  phenomenology."  We  are  not  truly  predictive. 


Codes  and  Calculations 


517 


Carothers:  How  useful  would  a  3-D  code  be? 

App:  I  don't  think  a  whole  lot  more  useful  to  us.  There  may 
be  some  special  circumstances  where  we  might  want  to  know  what 
the  effect  of  a  fault  is,  or  something  like  that.  I  think  that  95%  of 
the  cases,  even  if  we  had  a  beautiful  3-D  code,  would  probably  still 
be  done  in  2-D.  The  world  is,  to  a  first  approximation,  with  layering 
and  all,  two  dimensional.  We  still  do  a  lot  of  useful  one  dimensional 
calculations,  and  the  world  certainly  isn't  one  dimensional. 

Now,  there  are  specific  cases  you  might  want  to  look  at  with 
a  3-D  code.  You  might  want  to  look  at  a  three  dimensional 
geometry  to  assess  the  assumptions  made  in  a  two  dimensional  case. 
For  example,  how  might  a  sloping  layer  affect  the  results,  and  in 
what  way?  But  even  then  I  think  we  normally  would  use  a  two 
dimensional  code  for  the  main  part  of  the  study.  I  think  that's  how 
we  would  approach  it.  A  3-D  calculation  is  an  order  of  magnitude 
more  expensive  to  do,  and  more  complicated  besides. 

And  again,  in  3-D  we  are  still  data  limited.  How  are  we  going 
to  know  how  things  vary  in  three  dimensions  any  better  than  we  do 
in  two?  The  real  problem  lies  with  the  material  properties.  I  think 
that's  the  real  issue;  the  material  response. 

Carothers:  Dan,  how  do  you  get  the  numbers,  or  the  informa¬ 
tion  to  build  your  material  models? 

Patch:  That  comes  about  in  a  lot  of  different  ways,  and 
hopefully  each  way  adds  a  little  bit  of  information,  so  the  composite 
of  all  those  little  bits  of  information  makes  the  model,  with  its 
strengths  and  its  failings.  The  codes,  because  we've  spent  a  lot  of 
time  perfecting  what  I'll  call  numerical  techniques,  by  and  large  do 
an  extremely  good  job  of  solving  the  equations  of  motion,  and  doing 
all  the  things  they  should  do  when  they  have  the  right  kind  of  zoning. 
But  they  only  do  what  the  material  model  is.  So  the  material  model 
in  these  calculations  is  far  and  away  the  most  important  factor,  or 
unknown,  or  uncertainty  in  the  calculations. 

We  are  frequently  accused  of  just  taking  the  post-shot  data  and 
tuning  the  calculations  until  they  give  the  best  agreement,  and  then 
using  that  model  until  something  new  comes  in,  then  tuning  again. 
While  I  can't  speak  for  others,  I  don't  think  that's  an  accurate 
description  of  what  I  do,  and  I  don't  believe  it's  an  accurate 
description  of  what  a  number  of  other  people  do  either.  We  try  very 


518 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


hard  to  make  a  model  based  on  information  that  comes  from  tests 
on  the  rock  itself,  and  not  from  some  kind  of  global  empirical  data 
base.  And  so,  it  is  always  personally  bothersome  to  me  when  people 
say,  "Oh  yeah,  they  just  tune  their  models.  They  only  reason  their 
models  do  what  they  do  is  because  they've  adjusted  all  these 
knobs."  That,  I  think,  is  a  very  unfair  characterization  of  what  we 
do.  That's  not  been  our  approach. 

Certainly  we  compare  the  results  of  the  calculations  to  what 
happens.  It  wouldn't  make  sense  if  we  didn't.  That's  just  a  basic 
way  of  verifying  that  the  calculations  are  doing  the  right  thing,  and 
often  times  they  don't.  Certainly  there  are  sometimes  minor 
features,  sometimes  major  features  we're  not  happy  with.  I  think 
the  appropriate  question  then  to  ask  yourself  is  not  which  knob  do 
I  have  to  turn  to  get  this  thing  to  come  out  right,  but  to  ask  yourself 
which  piece  of  physics  is  missing  from  the  numerical  models,  or  if 
it  seems  like  one  knob  has  been  turned  the  wrong  direction,  how  can 
that  be?  It  is  not  to  simply  say,  "Well,  if  I  adjust  this  part  of  the 
model  everything  is  wonderful,"  and  go  on.  To  me  that's  not 
science  at  all,  and  the  implication  that  we  do  that  I  find  very 
bothersome.  So,  our  approach,  at  least  philosophically,  has  been  to 
verify  the  calculations,  and  when  we  have  a  problem  to  use  that  as 
a  red  flag  to  ask  what's  missing,  and  what  do  we  need  to  measure, 
and  then  try  to  devise  some  way  of  getting  this  new  material 
property  we  haven't  had  before.  And  we're  not  always  successful 
in  doing  that.  We  certainly  have  our  mysteries. 

There  are  a  number  of  models,  and  each  has  its  drawbacks,  and 
each  has  its  uncertainties.  I  suppose,  to  some  extent,  one  rejects 
those  models  which  give  features  that  just  don't  seem  to  be 
consistent  with  what  the  experience  in  the  field  is,  and  if  someone 
wants  to  say  that's  how  we're  tuning  the  calculations,  by  winnowing 
through  alternative  kinds  of  models,  in  that  sense  I  suppose  we  are 
tuning  the  models  by  rejecting  those  that  seem  to  be  non-physical. 

Carothers:  I  don't  know  what  else  you  can  do.  I  find  it  hard 
to  think  that  you  could  sit  down  and  from  first  principles  derive  a 
model  that  would  describe  what  goes  on  in  this  very  complicated 
material  under  rather  unusual  circumstances. 

Patch:  If  there  were  something  else  I  could  think  of,  I'd  do  it. 


Codes  and  Calculations 


519 


Rambo:  Over  the  years  of  doing  these  things  I've  tried  to  bring 
some  ideas  together  about  how  calculations  play  some  role  in  some 
shots,  and  on  other  shots  they  really  don't  play  any  significant  role 
at  all.  I  was  looking  at  what  happened  after  the  shot.  What's  the 
report  card  look  like?  How  well  did  we  do;  did  the  calculations  mean 
anything  at  all? 

There's  a  group  of  shots  that  we've  done  calculations  on  where 
we  were  trying  to  deal  with  issues  that  were  of  interest  for  a  number 
of  reasons,  where  people  felt  there  were  containment  issues  that 
needed  to  be  calculated,  and  the  calculations  did  matter.  We've  run 
these  calculations  on  a  lot  of  events,  and  they  looked  okay.  And  at 
least  in  looking  at  the  post-shot  analyses  where  we're  looking  at 
radiation,  we  didn't  see  anything.  So  in  a  sense  the  calculations  have 
been  helpful  to  kind  of  get  things  through  the  CEP,  and  maybe 
there's  a  connection  between  the  calculations  and  the  fact  that  we 
didn't  see  anything. 

Then  there's  the  area  that  I  call  kind  of  worrisome.  Worrisome 
areas  are  like  Roquefort  and  Coso.  Roquefort  was  probably  in  the 
thirty-some  kiioton  category  and  had  radioactivity  that  went  past 
the  bottom  two  plugs,  and  we'd  run  calculations  and  presented 
them  to  the  CEP.  It  bothers  me  to  run  these  things  and  say,  "Well, 
there's  still  a  residual  stress  even  though  there's  this  hard  layer  that 
runs  through  it  and  there's  a  lot  of  perturbation,  and  there's  this 
Grouse  Canyon  layer  that's  close  by.  It  bothers  me,  to  some  extent, 
to  run  these  things  and  go  down  to  the  CEP  and  say,  "Gee,  I  didn't 
see  anything  calculationally."  And  then  afterwards,  think  maybe 
there  was  something  I  should  have  talked  about. 

As  a  postscript  to  this  chapter,  and  a  case  study  of  the  current 
role  of  calculations  on  an  emplacement  hole  event  is  the  Barnwell 
event.  Barnwell,  with  a  yield  in  the  20  to  150  kiioton  range,  was 
fired  in  Area  20,  on  12/08/89.  John  Rambo  was  the  Livermore 
containment  scientist. 

Carothers:  John,  I  know  you  were  quite  concerned  about  the 
containment  of  Barnwell.  And,  let  me  say  that  if  anyone  were  to 
look  carefully  at  the  post-shot  data  on  Barnwell,  they  might 
conclude  that  your  apprehensions  were  well  founded.  There  are 
people  who  think  Barnwell  came  very  close  to  being  a  containment 
failure. 


520  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Rambo:  I  guess  I'm  one  of  those  people,  even  though  I  didn't 
say  it  publicly.  Barnwell.  Well,  in  the  beginning  we  didn't  suspect 
there  were  any  problems  whatsoever.  It  was  down  toward  the 
southern  end  Area  20,  in  20az,  in  new  territory,  so  to  speak. 

Carothers:  It  had  a  yield  in  a  range  where  we've  never  had  a 
problem. 

Rambo:  Or  never  had  seen  a  problem.  Sometimes  we  haven't 
looked. 

Carothers:  We've  never  had  an  escape  of  material  in  that  yield 
range. 

Rambo:  That's  right.  And  we  didn't  on  Barnwell  either.  But 
that's  what  we're  really  discussing.  In  the  beginning  I  decided  to  do 
calculations  for  an  issue  that  had  to  do  with  the  CEP,  and  that  was 
a  possible  low  scaled  depth  of  burial.  There  was  uncertainty  in  what 
the  maximum  credible  yield  was.  We  couldn't  lower  the  device  any 
deeper  in  the  hole  because  the  hole  was  crooked  and  we'd  get 
alignment  problems.  So,  as  the  containment  scientist  I  was  stuck 
with  a  depth  of  six  hundred  meters,  and  I  was  going  to  run 
calculations  for  scaled  depth  of  burial  purposes. 

There,  the  CEP  played  an  important  role  for  the  wrong  reasons. 
The  whole  thing  was  serendipitous.  It  was  really  that  way.  The 
material  properties,  for  up  on  the  Pahute,  came  right  in  the  center 
to  about  everything  we've  looked  at  in  past  experience.  And  the 
logs  were  straight  as  a  board.  We  didn't  see  any  reflections  for  two 
hundred  meters.  It  just  looked  marvelous. 

So,  I  didn't  see  any  problem  with  the  shot.  The  one  thing  I  did 
see  was,  "Gee,  the  drilling  rates  for  that  last  two  hundred  meters 
look  kind  of  slow."  I  hadn't  seen  anything  that  looked  quite  like 
that,  but  we've  had  experiences  in  hard  layers  here  and  there  and 
all  over  the  place,  and  the  geology  for  the  Molbo  event  was  like  that 
for  quite  a  ways,  and  there  was  no  problem  there.  And  so  I  just 
tossed  it  off.  "There's  no  problem  with  this  shot." 

Another  factor  that  was  important  here  was  that  to  exercise 
our  ability  to  measure  core  samples  we  went  in  and  took  some  core 
samples  and  measured  them  in  the  laboratory.  But  as  a  test,  before 
we  got  the  answers  back,  they  said,  "]ohn  Rambo,  we  want  you  to 
make  an  estimate  of  what  you  think  the  strength  is  of  this  rock." 
Well,  I  looked  at  one  version,  which  was  the  Butkovich  model,  which 


Codes  and  Calculations 


521 


gives  you  default  values  of  strength,  and  1  looked  at  that,  i  looked 
at  a  nearby  shot  called  Hardin,  where  we  had  samples  that  were 
measured,  and  I  looked  at  the  Hardin  cavity  radius,  from  which  I 
could  back-calculate  strengths.  I  looked  a  little  bit  at  the  drilling 
rates,  because  I  had  some  ideas  about  what  they  tell  you.  Well,  I 
increased  the  strength  quite  a  bit  from  the  default  values  that  you 
would  get  from  Butkovich's  model,  which  takes  average  properties. 

I  came  up  with  a  value  that  was  about  half  of  what  the  measured 
values  were  from  the  laboratory  measurements.  That  rock  was 
much  stronger  than  I'd  estimated. 

Later  on  I  had  some  DNA  calculators  estimate  it,  and  they  said, 
"Yeah,  that's  about  what  we  would  have  estimated  too,"  meaning 
their  estimates  would  have  looked  like  my  estimates. We  looked  at 
the  inside  of  the  hole  with  the  movie  log,  and  it  looked  like  it  was 
uniform  stuff  ail  the  way  up.  We  didn't  see  any  cracks,  we  didn't 
see  anything  but  uniform  material.  But,  above  that  layer  there  was 
a  layer  with  a  lot  of  gas  porosity.  We  took  samples  out  of  that  layer, 
and  you  could  break  them  apart  in  your  hand. 

So  I  ran  the  first  calculation.  A  big  shockwave  goes  up, 
traveling  in  almost  fully  saturated  material  up  to  this  two  hundred 
meter  level  in  hard  rock.  Then  it  comes  to  this  layer  of  very  weak 
rock.  Lo  and  behold!  An  enormous  reflection  comes  back.  In  the 
calculation,  just  as  the  rock  tries  to  hit  rebound,  or  to  set  up  the 
residual  stress  field,  the  reflection  caused  motion  which  unloaded 
the  residual  stress  field  around  the  cavity.  I  just  didn't  expect  that. 
This  calculation  looked  bad.  It  had  three  hundred  bars  of  cavity 
pressure,  and  almost  nothing  outside  of  it.  I  had  never  seen  a 
calculation  show  something  as  bad  as  that. 

So,  the  next  object  was  what  we  could  do  to  try  to  save  this 
shot.  They  said,  "Nothing  is  going  to  happen."  I  said,  "Well,  I'm 
not  sure  you  could  even  contain  the  gases  getting  up  into  the 
stemming  column  on  this."  So  they  said,  "Oh,  all  right,"  and  went 
back  and  measured  down  below  the  shot,  where  we  thought  there 
was  weaker  rock,  because  the  drilling  rates  were  higher.  And  sure 
enough  it  was  weaker.  I  put  this  new  model  into  the  calculation,  and 
yes,  that  helped  reduce  the  cavity  pressure  in  the  calculation  about 
to  the  point  where  it  was  equal  or  about  the  same  level  as  the 
residual  stress.  That  made  me  a  little  happier,  except  that  when  you 
went  to  lower  yields  the  effect  of  this  weak  material  below  the  shot 
point  started  to  go  away. 


522 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


So,  I  knew  al!  this,  and  I  went  down  to  the  CEP,  prepared  to 
present  it  to  the  Panel,  if  necessary.  I  thought  we  ought  to  be  able 
to  contain  this  thing  because  it  was  right  on  the  edge,  and  besides, 
nobody  on  the  Panel  believes  in  calculations.  I  came  down  with 
about  six  notebooks  full  of  viewgraphs  to  present  in  case  somebody 
wanted  to  get  into  the  subject.  The  rest  is  history.  Dr.  Brownlee 
said,  "Calculations  don't  make  any  difference."  Fred  App  was 
starting  to  get  interested  in  the  subject,  but  he  was  sort  of  swept 
away  by  Brownlee's  strong  statement.  I  was  sitting  there  with  my 
mouth  open,  thinking,  "Boy,  did  I  get  through  this  one  easy." 

But  I  was  still  quite  worried  about  what  might  happen,  because 
in  my  calculational  experience  I  had  never  seen  anything  quite  like 
it.  On  the  other  side  of  the  slate,  we  had  all  the  experience  of  high 
yield  events  that  had  never  shown  any  problems.  I  even  went  over 
and  calculated  a  nearby  event,  called  Lockney.  I  didn't  have  any 
measurements,  but  I  tried  to  back-calculate  from  the  cavity  radius 
and  the  drilling  rates.  It  didn't  look  good  either,  but  it  was  very, 
very  sensitive  to  minor  changes  in  strength.  That  was  what  was 
interesting  about  this  whole  thing.  We  didn't  appreciate  how,  with 
high  strength  you  can  get  these  enormous  changes  in  residual  stress 
for  slightly  different  properties.  It  comes  and  goes  with  very  minor 
differences  in  the  strength,  and  it  can  be  catastrophic  if  you  hit  the 
right  combination  of  timing  and  of  reflections. 

As  I  said,  Lockney  showed  poor  residual  stress  also.  But  it 
contained.  Lockney  had  something  like  five  percent  water  content, 
and  Fred  App  has  calculated  other  events  where  he  says,  "You 
know,  the  calculations  look  pretty  bad  up  there  on  Pahute,  but 
there's  still  this  very  low  water  content  that  they're  shooting  in." 
And  so,  I  thought  at  the  time  that  maybe  they  were  right.  Maybe 
containment  calculations  don't  make  any  difference  on  high  yield 
shots.  Maybe  you  can  shoot  anywhere,  in  any  material,  and  who 
cares.  So  that  did  affect  my  thinking  on  Barnwell. 

So,  I  was  concerned  already,  and  then  about  ten  minutes 
before  shot  time  the  device  physicist  came  up,  and  remember  that 
this  thing  gets  worse  as  you  go  to  lower  yields,  and  he  said,  "By  the 
way,  I  just  did  another  calculation.  You'll  be  pleased  to  know  the 
yield  has  gone  down."  It  wasn't  more  than  about  twenty  minutes 
later  that  I  saw  all  this  radiation  going  up  through  the  stemming 
column,  up  to  the  last  plug.  I  think  we  came  very  close  on  Barnwell, 
and  the  calculations  certainly  pointed  in  that  direction. 


523 


20 


Current  Practice 

Over  the  years  the  Laboratories  have  developed  certain  prac¬ 
tices  for  the  conduct  of  nuclear  operations  at  the  Test  Site,  including 
those  which  relate  to  containment.  After  all  the  theorizing,  the 
designing,  the  calculating  and  the  planning  has  been  done  it  is  the 
people  in  the  field  who  do  those  things  that  make  the  reality  of  a 
nuclear  event. 

From  the  earliest  days  of  nuclear  test  work  it  was  recognized 
that  a  field  operation  was  a  very  complex  undertaking.  Leaving 
aside  the  many  organizations  that  were  involved  in  planning,  build¬ 
ing,  providing,  and  operating  the  necessary  support  functions,  there 
was  the  need  to  coordinate  the  activities  of  the  Laboratory  people 
themselves.  The  Test  Directors  were  the  people  who  had  the 
ultimate  responsibility  to  see  that  the  plans  for  a  particular  event 
were  carried  out.  They  served  as  the  authority,  at  the  Site,  for  the 
work  that  was  to  be  done,  and  that  would  be  done  for  an  event 
sponsored  by  their  organization.  There  were  several  interfaces  to  be 
managed;  those  between  the  Test  Site  management,  the  various 
support  contractors,  the  Laboratory  management,  and  a  multitude  of 
Laboratory  people,  each  with  a  strong  interest  in  having  their 
experiment  taken  care  of  first.  Meeting  the  containment  require¬ 
ments  was  just  another  part  of  the  job.  How  these  things  are  done 
has  changed  over  the  years. 

The  responsibility  for  the  direction  of  the  Livermore  field 
program  is  shared  by  two  Test  Directors. 

Carothers:  What  does  a  Livermore  Test  Director  do? 

Page:  That's  a  big  question.  I  consider  the  Test  Director, 
foremost,  to  be  an  operations  manager  for  a  large  field  project.  A 
big  part  of  the  responsibility  has  to  do  with  safety. 

Carothers:  Does  it  include  the  things  related  to  containment? 


524 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Page:  That's  a  part  of  it,  but  the  real  focus  on  that  belongs  to 
the  containment  group.  But  since  the  Test  Director  is  the  man 
responsible,  on  the  spot,  he  essentially  owns  ail  of  those  aspects,  to 
first  order,  from  nuclear  safety  to  containment  to  industrial  safety. 

Roth:  You  pick  up  an  event  somewhere  in  its  definition  stage, 
and  actual  production  stage.  When  the  event  becomes  active  in  the 
field,  the  Test  Director  becomes  the  lead  man  in  charge  of  it  at  that 
point  in  time.  He  picks  up  that  responsibility  from  a  project 
physicist,  who  shepherds  it  from  its  inception  to  the  point  where  it's 
going  to  the  field.  I  concern  myself,  first  of  all,  with  getting  the 
fielding  done,  making  sure  the  facilities  are  available  for  the 
canisters  and  experiments  that  have  to  be  fielded,  coordinating  the 
craft  support  to  carry  that  out,  determining  the  safety  and  security 
requirements  of  classified  gear  in  the  field. 

Carothers:  Let  me  start  with  industrial  safety.  When  do  you 
become  responsible  for  that?  I  would  think  REECO,  for  instance, 
would  do  that. 

Page:  There  a  couple  of  aspects  to  that,  but  the  Test  Director 
assumes  ESstH  coordination  responsibility  from  the  DOE  for  the 
shot  site  at  a  certain  time.  It's  a  formal  transition  of  responsibility. 
Up  until  thattime  NVO  had  assigned  that  to  REECO,  and  so  REECO 
had  that  responsibility.  When  that  transition  happens,  then  the 
Laboratory  gets  it,  and  the  Test  Director  is  the  person  who  assumes 
that  responsibility.  What  that  means  is  that  he  is  responsible  for  the 
coordination  of  the  activities  at  the  shot  site  to  assure  that  they're 
done  safely,  that  all  the  independent  contractors  know  what's  going 
on,  and  that  they  know  what  the  other  people  are  doing.  He  has  the 
responsibility  to  make  sure  there  is  a  well-coordinated  operation. 
Of  course,  each  contractor  is  responsible  to  assure  that  their  people 
know  their  jobs,  and  that  they  do  them  safely.  But  the  contractors 
take  their  direction  from  the  Laboratory,  and  then  they  apply  their 
methods  to  get  the  job  done. 

The  craft  support  is  all  through  the  contractors.  REECO 
provides  the  crafts  we  need.  For  security,  we  call  heavily  on 
Wackenhut  to  do  the  guard  duty  we  require.  We  determine  the 
requirements  and  we  lay  those  requirements  on  those  people,  and 
they,  hopefully,  carry  them  out,  and  we  oversee  that  they  are 
carried  out  to  our  specifications. 


Current  Practice  525 

As  things  progress  I  become  very  busy  in  overseeing  the 
emplacement  of  the  canister  in  the  hole  -  -  the  handling  of  the 
cables,  the  operation  of  the  cranes,  ail  the  necessary  activities  that 
go  along  with  the  carrying  out  of  the  event.  Also,  I  oversee  the 
stemming  and  containment  requirements,  making  sure  that  the 
materials  that  are  put  in  directly  around  the  canister  and  around  the 
bomb  itself  meet  the  required  specifications,  and  that  the  various 
plugs,  and  the  gas  blocks  are  properly  installed.  There  are  a  myriad 
of  details  like  that. 

Roth:  The  legality  of  it  is  that  the  Test  Director  is  in  charge, 
but  of  course,  it's  a  cooperative  effort  with  a  lot  people  involved, 
and  you  listen  to  what  they  have  to  say. 

Carothers:  Let  us  say  the  device  has  been  delivered.  Inside 
that  fence  is  the  Laboratory's  area,  your  area,  isn't  it? 

Roth:  That's  right.  You're  talking  about  a  safety  and  security 
issue  now,  but  at  a  point  in  time,  which  I  normally  define  as  a 
significant  Laboratory  presence  and  activity,  that's  when  I  legally 
take  responsibility  for  that  site  from  DOE.  Basically  that's  when  the 
diagnostic  canister  first  comes  out  to  the  site  and  gets  installed  in  the 
tower,  and  significant  work  and  activity  goes  on  in  finalizing  the 
experiments.  That's  inside  the  perimeter  fence,  of  course. 

That  is  not  normally  the  time  when  security  is  on  the  site. 
Security  is  usually  not  established  until  significant  classified  material 
comes  on  the  site.  In  some  cases  there  won't  be  any  classified 
material  in  the  tower  where  they're  installing  diagnostic  equipment, 
depending  on  what  kind  of  event  it  is.  So,  it  could  be  as  late  as  a 
day  or  two  before  the  full  power  dry  runs  before  we  establish 
security  on  the  site.  And  full  power  is  typically  a  few  days  before 
device  delivery.  But  from  that  point  in  time  we  have  a  secured  site, 
where  you  have  guards  on  a  twenty-four  hour  basis,  making  sure 
only  authorized  people  are  allowed  access  to  the  site. 

Carothers:  You  said  that  you  legally  take  over  the  responsibil¬ 
ity  for  that  area  inside  that  perimeter  fence.  That  means  you  have 
the  responsibility  for  the  actions  of  the  contractors'  people? 

Roth:  We  interface  with  those  people  through  a  group  at  the 
Test  Site  which  used  to  be  called  the  Emgineering  and  Construction 
group,  but  that  has  been  recently  changed  to  CstDE;  Construction 
and  Drilling  Engineering.  They  actually  do  the  interfacing  with  the 


526 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


contractors.  They  give  the  requirements  for  the  number  of  carpen¬ 
ters,  and  wiremen,  and  so  forth  that  will  be  needed  on  a  particular 
day.  They  interface  with  the  craft  people,  with  REECO,  on  a  day 
to  day  basis.  And  they  essentially  report  to  me,  from  the  standpoint 
of  getting  instructions  about  when  we  need  the  tower  up,  or  what 
we  need  there,  or  where  we  need  a  work  station,  and  so  on.  And, 
they  implement  those  instructions.  So,  I  don't  deal  directly  with  the 
crafts,  but  they  are  reacting  to  my  requirements. 

I'm  responsible  for  safety,  and  security,  ultimately.  That  again 
is  a  delegated  effort;  I  can't  be  in  every  location  at  every  point  in 
time.  You  have  to  depend  on  a  lot  of  people  to  uphold  those 
requirements.  But  ultimately  it  rests  on  me. 

Carothers:  Usually  only  when  something  goes  wrong.  Then 
it's  suddenly,  "Well,  Bernie's  the  guy  in  charge.  Go  see  him." 

Roth:  That's  right.  They  never  say  that  when  everything  is 
going  smoothly.  When  something  goes  wrong,  everybody's  willing 
to  admit  I'm  responsible. 

Carothers:  Do  you  get  involved  in  the  site  selection? 

Page:  No.  Only  to  the  extent  that  the  site  meets  the  needs  of 
the  field  operation,  and  will  allow  us  to  do  the  experiment  we  want 
to  do.  It  has  to  be  the  right  depth,  it  has  to  be  the  right  diameter, 
it  has  to  have  enough  room  for  the  trailer  park.  Ground  motion  is 
a  big  issue,  and  you  don't  want  the  hole  located  where  there  could 
be  damage  to  some  facility. 

Roth:  Somebody  says,  "We  have  a  device  here  of  X  yield,  and 
we  need  a  hole  to  accommodate  it."  That  falls  into  the  containment 
area,  and  they  say,  "Oh  yeah,  we  have  holes  A,  B,  C,  D.  Then  they 
look  at  the  yield,  and  the  device,  and  determine  the  depth  of  burial 
that's  required,  and  they  say,  "Weil,  this  is  the  hole  it  should  go  in." 
If  there  are  unique  requirements  for  some  reason  we  may  suggest 
differently,  but  basically  that's  how  it  happens. 

I  don't  say  where  a  new  hole  should  be  drilled.  The  geology 
people  and  the  Test  Site  people  make  that  decision.  But  we  have 
kept  a  running  cognizance  of  what  holes  are  available,  and  as  a  drill 
rig  becomes  available  we  might  say,  "We  need  another  high  yield 
hole  on  Pahute  someplace,  so  give  us  a  high  yield  hole."  Then  we 
coordinate  that  with  other  activities  to  see  that  we're  not  a  half  mile 


Current  Practice 


527 


away  from  another  high  yield  event  that  could  go  off  in  the  same 
time  period.  But  the  specific  location  and  coordinates  are  not  my 
choice.  That's  the  geologists. 

Carothers:  jack,  as  the  Los  Alamos  Containment  Program 
Manager,  what  interaction  do  you  have  with  the  J-6  field  operations 
people?  Do  they  work  for  you,  or  are  they  a  separate  organization? 

House:  They  are  separate  and  apart.  First  of  ail,  they  are  in 
a  different  division.  Although  containment  is  in  the  Environmental 
and  Earth  Sciences  Division,  we  work  for  ]  Division.  1  consider  jay 
Norman,  the  j  Division  Leader  and  Program  Director  for  Test,  to  be 
my  technical  boss.  Field  operations,  J-6,  are  people  we  work  hand 
in  hand  with  from  the  very  first  definition  of  an  event,  when  we  have 
to  go  pick  a  hole. 

Carothers:;  Who  selects  the  site  for  a  new  emplacement  hole? 

House:  I  do  that.  I  and  a  colleague  in  J-6  work  hand  in  glove 
on  the  site  selection;  where  are  we  going  to  drill  the  hole,  and  how 
deep  are  we  going  to  drill  it,  and  so  on.  I  may  have  picked  a  set  of 
coordinates  on  the  NTS  map  that,  when  the  field  operations  folks 
actually  go  out  with  the  surveyors  to  drive  a  stake,  they  find  is  in  an 
arroyo,  or  is  near  a  power  line,  or  what  have  you.  So,  there  is  a  lot 
of  interaction  with  the  J-6  people.  Those  guys  do  not  work  for  us; 
we  work  together.  They  also  take  our  containment  criteria  and 
develop  a  relatively  standard  and  basic  stemming  plan  for  each  and 
every  event. 

Carothers:  Jack,  you  always  have  the  same  stemming  plan. 

House:  Well  yes,  more  or  less.  It's  got  the  same  basic 
ingredients.  It's  got  alternating  layers  of  coarse  and  fines  material. 
And  it's  got  a  grout  plug  here,  and  two  TPE  plugs  there,  but  the 
locations  of  those  are  specified  by  the  containment  scientist,  and  his 
or  her  event  team.  J-6  merely  translates  their  requirements  into  a 
blue-line  drawing,  which  ultimately  goes  to  the  field  for  execution. 

Among  other  differences  in  the  way  Livermore  and  Los  Alamos 
conduct  their  field  operations  is  the  manner  in  which  they  lower  the 
device  and  diagnostics  hardware  down  hole.  Los  Alamos  uses  wire- 
rope  harnesses,  Livermore  uses  drill  pipe.  The  origins  of  the 
difference  seem  to  be  lost  in  the  past. 


528  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

House:  If  there  are  valid  reasons  for  the  difference,  I  am  not 
aware  of  them.  I  do  understand  that  Livermore  is  able,  on  drill  pipe, 
to  put  a  much  heavier  package  down  hole  than  Los  Alamos  can,  even 
on  a  four  wire-rope  harness.  We  started  in  the  early  days  just  using 
two  wire-rope  harnesses.  And,  as  the  diagnostic  packages  got 
larger,  and  longer,  and  heavier,  obviously  the  capability  to  lower 
larger  packages  became  necessary,  and  they  added  more  wire-ropes. 
There  are  now  two,  three,  and  four  rope  configurations  they  use, 
depending  on  the  size  and  weight  of  the  package.  But  as  far  as  how 
the  difference  between  the  two  Laboratories  as  to  drill  pipe  versus 
wire-rope  came  about,  I  don't  have  the  vaguest  idea. 

In  the  Test  Operations  Review  Team  activities,  which  has  since 
turned  into  a  effort  that  is  known  as  the  Joint  Test  Organization, 
which  has  the  aim  of  combining  Livermore  and  Los  Alamos  re¬ 
sources  at  the  Test  Site,  there  has  been  a  consideration  of  using  one 
system  or  the  other.  Interestingly  enough,  long  and  hard  as  it  has 
been  studied,  I  think  the  ultimate  resolution  was,  "Well,  Los  Alamos 
will  stay  with  wire-rope  harnesses  unless  we  get  a  package  that  is  just 
absolutely  too  big,  and  then  we'll  do  it  using  the  Livermore  system." 
So,  it's  still  unresolved. 

Carothers:  Perhaps  you  know,  Bernie.  Livermore  emplaces 
the  device  and  diagnostic  hardware  using  drill  pipe.  Los  Alamos 
uses  wire-rope.  Why  is  there  a  difference?  I'm  sure  you  think  drill 
pipe  is  better.  Is  it  really,  or  is  it  just  another  difference  between 
practices  of  the  Laboratories? 

Roth:  Those  preferences  were  developed  before  I  became 
really  established  in  the  program.  I  remember  seeing  one  or  two  of 
our  events  put  down  on  flat  wire  rope.  That  was  still  in  the 
developmental,  or  experimental  stage  at  that  time.  Before  I  got  fully 
on  board  that  was  put  aside  and  everything  was  done  on  drill  pipe 
after  that. 

So,  I  grew  up  with  drill  pipe.  One  reason  for  it  that  I'm  aware 
of  is  that  drill  pipe  has  a  much  higher  weight  capacity  for  putting 
down  a  package  than  a  wire-rope  set.  It's  been  developed  over  the 
years  to  where  we  can  put  a  million  or  more  pounds  down  hole,  and 
we  have  done  that  on  a  few  occasions.  The  one  event  that  comes 
to  mind  was  Flax,  and  if  I  remember  the  number  right  we  were 
looking  at  a  940,000  to  960,000  pound  load.  Los  Alamos  has 


Current  Practice 


529 


gone  from  one  cable  to  two  cables  to  four  cables,  but  I  think  even 
their  four  cable  capacity  does  not  equal  our  heavier  drill  pipe 
capacity. 

Page:  I  can't  answer  the  question  of  why  we  first  started  using 
drill  pipe,  but  the  reason  we  like  using  it  today  is  that  drill  pipe  offers 
a  heavy  load  carrying  capability.  We  believe  the  joining  method  is 
reliable,  and  it's  something  we  can  test.  And,  we've  had  good  luck 
with  it. 

Carothers:  What  do  you  mean  when  you  say  it's  something  you 
can  test?  Do  you  pull  test  all  those  joints? 

Page:  Yes  we  do.  Of  course,  then  we  have  to  unmake  them. 

Roth:  There's  a  very  strict  quality  control  program  involved  in 
all  of  that.  The  pipes  are  first  of  all  threaded  and  inspected,  and  then 
pull  tested  to  some  125  or  150%  of  what  the  working  load  is 
expected  to  be.  They  are  then  very  carefully  maintained  from  that 
point  on  to  see  that  they  aren't  damaged  in  any  way,  even  to  the 
extent  of  seeing  that  somebody  doesn't  sabotage  one  of  them. 
They're  brought  to  the  event  site,  put  into  an  enclosed  area,  and 
maintained  there  until  they're  used.  The  threading  operation  itself 
has  a  quality  control  on  it,  in  that  the  pipe  joint  makeup  has  to  fit 
within  certain  tolerances.  The  threaded  joints  are  marked  with  a 
small  diamond,  so  they  have  to  thread  up  into  some  portion  of  that 
diamond.  Going  too  far  or  too  short  is  not  acceptable.  So,  we  have 
very  good  assurance  when  we  go  to  lift  that  load  that  joint  is  going 
to  be  good,  and  that  pipe  is  going  to  be  good.  And  it's  special  metal. 
It's  not  necessarily  old  D-36  steel;  it's  API  pipe. 

Carothers:  Do  you  have  to  use  a  drill  rig  to  put  the  device 
down? 

Page:  No.  You  can  use  a  drill  rig,  but  the  emplacement 
machine  can  be  a  crane,  a  sub-base,  and  a  stabbing  tower.  The  sub¬ 
base  is  a  working  platform  that  allows  us  to  tie  off  the  load  when  we 
let  go  of  it  with  the  crane.  The  process  works  pretty  well,  and  it's 
reasonably  fast. 

Roth:  The  crane  actually  holds  the  load,  and  lowers  it  pipe 
section  by  pipe  section.  And  we  use  ancillary  cranes  that  feed  the 
pipe  up  to  the  stabbing  tower.  The  drillers  thread  it  in,  the  main 


530 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


crane  picks  up  the  load,  releases  it  from  the  grips,  and  lowers  it 
down.  People  underneath  the  sub-base  tie  on  the  cables  and  put  on 
the  experiments  that  go  on  the  pipe. 

Carothers:  Once  it's  in  place,  you  have  to  fill  the  center  of  that 

pipe. 

Roth:  Yes,  but  that's  relatively  easy.  We  just  grout  it  up. 

There  is  a  stemming  plan  for  the  hole  that  we  adhere  to  that's 
defined,  and  reviewed,  and  accepted  prior  to  the  time  we  actually 
carry  it  out.  That  involves  perhaps  a  half  dozen  different  types  of 
material.  Boron  rich  material  might  be  emplaced  around  the  device 
itself,  for  neutron  shielding.  Above  that,  depending  on  what  the 
diagnostic  requirements  are,  we  have  overton  sand,  or  perhaps 
magnetite,  perhaps  sometimes  a  mix  for  neutron  shielding.  Once 
above  the  canister,  generally  it  winds  down  to  a  sand,  gravel,  and 
eventually  a  plug  configuration. 


Gas  Blocks  and  Fanouts 

Carothers:  Who  at  Los  Alamos  designs  cable  fanouts  and  cable 
gas  blocks? 

House:  The  field  engineering  folks  do  that,  and  then  they  bring 
the  design  to  the  containment  group  for  review.  We  have  specs,  and 
both  Los  Alamos  and  Livermore  use  the  same  specs  for  field 
installed,  or  discrete,  gas  blocks.  While  the  two  Laboratories'  field 
installed  gas  blocks  are  of  slightly  different  design,  they  are  the  same 
end  product,  in  essence,  in  what  they  are  designed  to  do,  and  the 
pressures  they  are  designed  to  meet,  and  so  forth.  But  the 
containment  program  does  not  design  the  gas  blocks.  They  endorse 
the  specifications,  such  as  the  need  to  have  a  125  psi  gas  block  for 
this  particular  function,  and  so  on. 

The  fiber  optic  cables  are  supposed  to  be  continually  gas 
blocked,  and  if  they  don't  meet  the  pressure  test  that's  done  on  each 
and  every  cable,  then  you've  got  to  strip  the  coating  back  to  the 
fibers  and  discretely  gas  block  them. 


Current  Practice 


531 


Carothers:  Let's  say  you  have  a  reel  of  fiber  optic  cable.  You 
cut  off  ten  feet  don't  you,  and  test  that?  What  if  it  doesn't  meet 
that  test? 

House:  Then  you  don't  use  that  reel,  or  you  put  a  discrete  gas 
block  in  the  run.  You  put  the  blocks  in  at  the  standard  locations 
where  you  have  designated  gas  blocks  for  the  multi-conductor 
cable.  In  our  particular  geometries  there  are  typically  three  places, 
one  in  each  of  the  rigid  plugs,  where  gas  blocks  are  placed. 

Carothers:  What's  your  experience  with  the  fiber  optic  cables? 
Do  many  of  them  fail  your  pressure  test? 

House:  It's  probably  about  thirty  percent  that  fail,  that  leak 
enough  so  they  don't  meet  the  specs.  They  are  supposed  to  come 
from  the  factory,  by  design,  as  continually  gas  blocked  fiber  optic 
cables.  But,  when  they  sit  in  the  Nevada  desert  sun,  or  lie  out  in  a 
cable  way  before  they've  been  terminated,  there's  a  degradation 
that  takes  place.  It  in  many  cases  causes  the  cable  not  to  pass  the 
test,  and  then  you've  got  to  go  in  and  discretely  gas  block  them. 

The  fiber  optic  cable  is  a  very  small  diameter  cable  —  maybe 
a  1/2  inch  outside  diameter,  which  of  course  includes  the  sheath 
and  the  protective  jacket,  and  so  on.  By  the  time  you  get  down  to 
the  potential  flow  path  for  gas  up  one  of  those  cables,  it's  very  small. 
It's  hard  to  envision  gas  being  driven  very  far  up  one  of  those  fiber 
optic  cables,  but  we  gas  block  them  because  that's  the  way  we  do 
it.  Conservatism  is  perhaps  our  most  important  product. 

Carothers:  Well,  coax  cables  used  to  leak  gases  to  the  surface. 
Gases  were  forced  a  long  way  through  them  -  -  a  thousand  feet  or 
more.  You  look  at  the  cable,  and  you  wonder  how  you  could 
possibly  push  gas  through  it,  but  there  is  plenty  of  evidence  that  it 
happens. 

House:  The  factory  gas-blocked  coax  works  very,  very  well.  I 
don't  have  any  numbers  in  my  head  about  failure  rate,  but  it  is  very 
low.  Coax  is  good  stuff.  In  terms  of  our  field,  or  discrete,  gas  blocks 
that  are  installed  in  the  multi-conductor  cables,  both  Laboratories' 
cable  gas  blocks  work  very  well.  They're  not  a  problem. 


Carothers:  Who  makes  the  discrete  gas  blocks  Livermore  uses? 


532 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Roth:  They're  made  on  site.  That  process  was  developed  over 
the  years.  The  weather  coating  is  stripped  off  and  the  outer  jacket 
it  cut  down  to  the  electrical  conductors.  That  section  of  the  cable 
is  placed  in  a  plastic  mold,  and  an  epoxy  material  is  pumped  into  that 
mold  from  one  end,  and  out  the  other.  That  epoxy  material  hardens 
and  encapsulates  the  conductors  and  the  shielding  material. 

Page:  There  are  specifications  as  to  how  it's  done,  what  the 
materials  are,  and  what  the  criteria  are  for  a  good  gas  block.  That 
process  is  managed  by  the  construction  engineering  people.  The 
containment  people  specify  where  they  go,  and  have  the  responsi¬ 
bility  for  seeing  that  they're  in  the  right  place  with  respect  to  the 
formation  and  the  location  of  the  plugs. 

Carothers:  If  you  look  at  the  containment  history,  before 
Baneberry  lots  of  the  shots  seeped  material  through  the  cables,  or 
through  the  stemming.  Since  Baneberry,  that  just  doesn't  happen 
anymore.  I  think  that  is  a  tribute  to  the  people  in  the  field  who 
concern  themselves  with  the  stemming,  and  the  cables,  and  the  gas 
blocks,  and  so  on.  People  from  the  Laboratories  come  to  the  CEP 
and  say,  "Well,  we're  going  to  use  these  gas  blocks  and  this 
stemming,"  and  the  CEP  people  say,  "Oh,  fine,  that's  good." 

Making  those  statements  good  really  depends  on  somebody 
out  there  in  the  dust  and  the  gravel  and  the  sun,  or  the  rain  and  the 
wind  doing  that  stuff  right.  And  the  record  is  that  they  haven't 
missed  once,  on  lots  and  lots  of  shots,  and  on  thousands  of  cables. 
A  whole  bunch  of  hot,  dusty,  sweaty,  or  maybe  wet,  cold  people 
deserve  a  pat  on  the  back  for  that. 

Roth:  Yes.  For  a  number  of  years  we  did  that  discrete  gas 
blocking  right  out  in  the  cable  ways,  in  whatever  the  weather  was, 
and  built  tents  over  the  stations.  In  the  present  day,  as  much  as 
possible  we  try  to  do  that  back  in  the  cable  yard,  under  a  more 
controlled  environment,  and  with  better  conditions.  What  that 
means  is  pre-cutting  cables,  and  pre-locating  those  gas  blocks  so 
they  fall  in  the  plugs  in  the  right  places,  and  that  works  out  very  well. 
That  alleviates  some  of  the  labor  involved  in  discrete  gas  blocking, 
but  it's  still  not  a  trivial  kind  of  task.  As  much  as  possible  we  try  to 
do  it  away  from  the  shot  area,  but  there  are  still  occasionally  late¬ 
time  requirements  where  it  has  to  be  done  out  in  the  field. 


Current  Practice  533 

Carothers:  Byron,  "out  in  the  field"  for  DNA  is  in  a  tunnel. 
What's  your  experience  with  leaks  from  cables?  Is  it  an  easier 
problem? 

Ristvet:  I  like  to  point  with  pride  that,  with  the  exception  of 
Diamond  Fortune,  which  I  predicted  would  probably  seep  into  the 
tunnel  through  the  medium  at  late  times,  we've  not  had  one  atom 
into  the  tunnel  on  anything  I  designed.  That's  in  part  because  I 
changed  our  gas  blocking  schemes  on  the  cables.  I  think  the  cables 
were  allowing  gas  to  get  a  long  way  down  the  stemming  column. 
With  a  low  yield  you  just  don't  smash  the  cables  hard  enough  to 
prevent  them  from  being  a  pathway.  We  know  we  get  communica¬ 
tion  through  the  stemming  itself  to  the  FAC.  And  then  we  have  all 
the  cables  wide  open,  because  when  the  FAC  detonates,  it  just  cut 
all  those  cables.  We  saw  that  on  reentry.  So  now  all  the  multi¬ 
conductor  firing  cables  are  sitting  there  wide  open,  and  they  go  all 
the  way  back  to  the  TAPS  area  and  near  the  end  of  stemming.  And 
you  know  how  it  is  with  radioactive  gas;  if  there's  any  possible 
pathway,  it  will  find  it. 

Carothers:  A  thing  that  is  a  little  surprising  is  to  calculate  the 
volume  of  that  radioactive  gas  that's  bothering  you  so  much.  It's 
a  few  cubic  centimeters,  or  even  less. 

Ristvet:  I'll  give  you  a  good  example.  On  Disko  Elm  we  had 
to  describe  to  the  Admiral,  the  Secretary  of  Energy  himself,  that  we 
did  not  have  a  major  containment  failure.  We  saw  activity  that  came 
down  via  the  cables,  then  back  into  the  LOS  pipe  on  the  wrong  side 
of  the  gas  blocks.  How  much  was  it?  It  was  four  curies,  maximum, 
of  zenon  and  a  little  bit  of  krypton  85.  It  was  almost  all  zenon,  and 
the  volume  turned  out  to  be  nine  microliters.  That  is  a  very  small 
amount. 

Carothers:  Aren't  you  proud  of  those  people  who  develop  the 
monitoring  instruments?  They  sure  do  a  good  job,  don't  they? 

Ristvet:  They  are  fantastic.  They  have  to  use  cyrogenic  traps 
to  actually  collect  it,  and  pump  millions  of  cubic  meters  of  air 
through  the  traps,  but  they  can  get  it. 

Carothers:  And  they  can  measure  how  much  there  is. 

Ristvet:  That's  exactly  correct.  And  every  time  they  measure 
a  little  bit  better  the  standard  goes  down. 


534 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Disko  Elm  was  the  last  time  we  saw  anything  flow  down  the 
pipe,  and  that's  when  we  realized  —  in  fact  I  caught  it  in  the  middle 
of  Distant  Zenith  —  that  we  weren't  separating  our  cables  like  we 
used  to.  We  were  using  predominately  Livermore  devices,  and 
Livermore  likes  to  use  this  four  conductor  Number  2  for  the  firing 
cables.  That  is  an  unbelievable  leaker,  because  not  only  does  the 
jacket  have  lots  of  holes  in  it,  but  it  is  a  stranded  cable.  It's  a  great 
power  cable,  and  of  course,  that's  exactly  what  it's  used  for  —  for 
charging  up  the  x-units.  But  we  tested  it,  and  I  think  the  permeabil¬ 
ity  was  two  or  three  darcies  over  a  hundred  foot  length.  So,  you 
could  imagine  it's  just  a  conduit.  But,  it  works  real  well  once  you 
separate  the  strands.  You  do  that  and  you  cut  it  down  at  least  into 
the  millidarcy  range.  You  don't  even  have  to  take  the  insulation  off. 

Carothers:  There  used  to  be  some  people  at  the  Livermore 
Laboratory  who  were  very  touchy  about  their  firing  cables,  because 
they  had  some  experiences  they  didn't  like  very  much.  I'm 
surprised  they  let  you  mess  with  their  firing  cables. 

Ristvet:  Well,  I  talked  it  over  at  length  with  Mr.  Ray  Peabody 
et  al,  who  do  Livermore's  firing,  and  Ray  and  Mike  Bockas  stood  and 
watched  every  step  that  was  done.  And  they  were  there  even  when 
we  did  the  same  thing  on  other  shots  in  the  same  way.  When  we  did 
it  on  the  Los  Alamos  device,  Everett  Holmes  and  crew  stood  there 
and  just  watched  everything  that  was  done,  and  assured  themselves 
that  everything  would  be  okay. 

Carothers:  It's  called  attention  to  detail,  joe  LaComb  would 
have  smiled  and  nodded  approvingly. 

Ristvet:  That's  certainly  right.  I  can  understand  the  sensitivity. 

I  can  remember  one  DNA  shot  where  we  were  down  to  the  last  set 
of  firing  cables  because  we  had  a  little  water  getting  into  the  RTV 
boxes.  And  the  thought  of  retrieving  a  live  nuclear  device  on  a 
reentry  does  not  appeal  to  me.  We've  thought  about  it  many  times 
though,  and  we  actually  have  a  contingency  plan  for  such. 


Current  Practice 


535 


Plugs 

Page:  Was  coal-tar  epoxy  the  first  material  Livermore  used  for 
plugs? 

Carothers:  They  used  concrete  plugs  on  a  few  shots,  but  they 
weren't  very  enthusiastic  about  those  after  they  lost  the  cables  on 
Duryea  because  somebody  forgot  about  the  exotherm  when  the 
concrete  set  up.  The  cable  insulation  softened,  or  melted,  and  all 
the  cables  shorted  out.  Including  the  firing  cables.  It's  actually 
quite  embarrassing  not  to  be  able  to  communicate  with  the  device. 
A  lot  of  people  get  very  upset  about  that. 

Page:  That  would  be  a  Test  Director's  nightmare. 

Roth:  Emplacing  the  coal-tar  epoxy  mix  was  an  attempt  to 
solve  the  exotherm  problem  you  can  have  with  concrete,  and  still 
get  a  rapidly  setting  up  plug.  And,  it  was  an  attempt  to  get  a  tighter 
seal.  All  those  kinds  of  things  drove  the  development  of  that 
material. 

Carothers:  I've  never  talked  to  a  person  who  liked  coal-tar 
epoxy  plugs. 

Roth:  They  were  smelly,  they  were  carcinogenic,  and  they 
were  messy.  If  you  got  some  of  that  stuff  on  you,  you  couldn't  get 
it  off.  It  was  gooey,  sloppy  stuff  that  ruined  your  clothing,  and  it 
was  difficult  to  put  in  place,  but  for  years  we  did  that. 

Page:  It  was  miserable  stuff.  It  was  just  terrible  stuff  to  deal 
with,  to  be  in  direct  contact  with.  It  was  put  together  in  transit 
trucks,  and  it  was  difficult  to  control  the  mix.  The  coal-tar  was  just 
dumped  in  the  hole,  along  with  the  gavel,  and  you  were  never 
certain  where  the  coal-tar  and  the  gravel  ended  up.  We  made  some 
of  those  plugs  in  surface  casings,  and  when  we  pulled  them  out,  cut 
them  apart  and  looked  at  them,  the  uniformity  through  the  plug 
never  did  look  good  to  me.  I  think  they  just  depended  on  the  fact 
that  there  was  a  lot  of  it  there  to  give  something  that  was  going  to 
do  the  job.  I  think  we  did  ourselves  a  big  favor  when  we  got  rid  of 
that. 


536 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  There  were  several  components  to  those  plugs;  the 
coal-tar,  the  epoxy,  the  hardener,  and  all  that  had  to  be  mixed 
together. 

Page:  That's  right.  In  fact,  we  usually  had  a  chemist,  Phil 
Fleming,  be  there  when  we  were  putting  those  plugs  in.  That's  more 
precision  work  than  you  ought  to  have  in  the  field.  Another  thing 
that  people  have  said  is  that  the  coal-tar  was  a  carcinogenic 
substance,  and  people  working  with  it  were  required  to  wear 
protective  clothing  -  -  lab  coats  and  gloves  and  boots. 

Roth:  When  the  gravel  and  the  coal-tar  got  down  there,  there 
was  a  tendency  for  the  gravel  to  settle  out,  and  maybe  the  coal-tar 
epoxy  flowed  a  little  bit.  Hopefully  it  flowed  into  the  interstices  of 
the  gravel,  but  maybe  the  gravel  built  up  preferentially  on  one  side 
of  the  hole.  We  couldn't  know  that,  but  the  plugs  were  thick  enough 
that  we  thought  we  had  adequate  containment. 

Carothers:  After  the  coal-tar  epoxy  plugs  Livermore  went  to 
two-part  epoxy  plugs  for  a  while.  Los  Alamos  still  uses  them.  What 
did  you  think  about  those  plugs?  Why  did  you  give  them  up? 

Page:  I  don't  remember  much  about  that  stuff,  but  I  don't 
think  it  was  a  whole  lot  different  from  the  coal-tar,  myself.  Take  the 
requirements  on  quality  control.  Here  we  had  two  different 
products  that  came  in  from  different  vendors.  Both  had  to  be  stored 
properly,  and  we  built  a  special  facility  for  them.  You  always 
worried  about  runningoutof  one  or  the  other  material  ata  bad  time. 
And,  it  had  to  be  blended  properly,  and  it  had  to  get  to  the  hole  in 
a  timely  manner,  because  it  came  from  the  mixing  plant,  near  the 
shaker  plant,  which  is  a  ways  away.  It  might  have  been  a  little  better 
product  than  the  CTE  in  terms  of  uniformity  in  the  kind  of  plug  it 
produced,  but  it  still  was  a  difficult  thing  to  work  with. 

Roth:  So,  a  few  years  ago  we  went  to  the  sanded  gypsum  plugs. 
That's  a  cement,  sand,  and  gypsum  mixture  that  has  good  qualities 
with  respect  to  expansion  or  shrinkage.  It's  mixed  on  the  surface, 
so  we  know  it's  a  homogeneous  mixture,  and  when  it  gets  down  in 
the  hole  it  flows  very  well.  Its  qualities  are  such  that  it  can  be 
emplaced  without  an  exotherm  that  is  higher  than  the  cables  or 
experiments  close  to  it  can  stand,  and  in  special  circumstances  we 
can  mix  it  with  chilled  water.  A  big  attribute  of  the  sanded  gypsum 
for  a  Test  Director  is  that  we  don't  have  to  wait  for  it  to  set  up.  We 


Current  Practice 


537 


can  put  it  in  the  hole,  and  within  a  half  hour  to  forty-five  minutes 
it's  hard,  and  we're  ready  to  continue  stemming.  By  the  time  you 
get  the  pipe  extracted  and  the  equipment  cleaned  up  it's  hard,  and 
we  can  continue  the  stemming  operation.  From  a  cost  standpoint 
it's  a  fairly  expensive  material,  but  so  was  the  coal-tar  epoxy. 

Carothers:  What  makes  it  expensive? 

Roth:  I'm  not  sure.  Perhaps  the  gypsum.  The  equipment  to 
mix  it  and  pump  it  not  commonly  used.  It's  not  a  transit  mix  truck. 
It's  a  batch  mixing  operation  where  they  pneumatically  blow  the 
gypsum  into  a  mixture  of  water  and  sand,  and  tumble  that. 
Eventually  it  gets  pumped  out,  over  to  the  hole  and  down  a  tremmi 
pipe.  We've  had  cameras  down  there,  and  it  comes  squirting  out 
quite  violently  down  at  the  bottom.  It's  a  good  material,  but  it  is 
expensive  compared  to  concrete. 

Page:  It  seems  to  form  a  nice  product,  and  when  it's  set  it's  got 
a  strength  of  about  3000  psi.  And  we  think  it's  fairly  compliant 
when  it's  hit  with  high  ground  motion. 


The  Role  of  the  Containment  Groups 

Carothers:  Jack,  how  much  authority  does  your  containment 
team  have  with  respect  to  their  event? 

House:  When  I  assign  the  containment  scientist  the  responsi¬ 
bility  for  an  event  it  also  includes  a  team  of  -  -  and  it  may  be  a  mix, 
or  one  person  might  be  wearing  two  hats  -  -  typically  a  geologist,  a 
geophysicist,  and  a  phenomenologist.  If  you  take  the  Icecap  event, 
for  example,  Nancy  Marusak  was  the  containment  scientist,  and  she 
was  also  the  geologist.  Mark  Mathews  was  the  geophysicist,  and 
Tom  Kunkle  did  the  phenomenology  work.  That  was  the  event  team 
for  that  particular  activity. 

Once  the  containmentscientist  has  the  assignment,  she  and  her 
team  have  the  responsibility,  and  the  authority,  to  do  the  event 
design.  Now  I,  as  part  of  the  team  as  a  sort  of  ex-officio  member, 
have  the  purview  to  look  over  their  shoulders,  as  it  were.  When  we 
go  to  a  peer  review  of  the  containment  design,  the  principals  in  the 


538 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


containment  program  at  our  Laboratory  that  we  consider  as  prima¬ 
rily  the  containment  scientists,  and  the  two  CEP  members,  have 
every  right  and  privilege  to  take  pot  shots  at  it  and  pick  it  apart. 

Carothers:  Can  the  containment  scientist  specify  what  logs  she 
wants?  Can  she  have  them  rerun  if  she  doesn't  like  the  quality  of 
the  ones  she  gets? 

House:  You  betcha.  She  also  negotiates  if  necessary  with  the 
field  operations,  the  J-6  guys,  if  they  want  to  reposition  a  plug  so 
it  fits  a  particular  harness  connection  scheme;  they  work  that  out 
together.  The  event  team  is  pretty  much  autonomous;  they 
certainly  have  the  responsibility  and  the  authority  to  get  or  take 
what  is  needed  to  successfully  design  and/or  complete  the  event. 

Carothers:  Do  they  specify  the  locations  of  the  plugs  and  the 
plug  materials? 

House:  They  do  locate  the  plugs.  The  plug  material,  if  we  are 
considering  the  rigid  plugs,  would  be  the  grout  and  the  two-part 
epoxy.  For  instance,  again  considering  Icecap,  we  had  three  rigid 
plugs.  One  of  them  was  HPNS-5  grout,  or  Husky  Pup  Neat  Slurry, 
and  two  of  them  were  two-part  epoxy.  We  worked  hand  in  glove 
with  the  field  operations  people,  J-6,  in  getting  this  new  to  us  HPNS- 
5  mix.  It  was  designed  for  Los  Alamos  by  the  Waterways  Experi¬ 
ment  Station  folks,  who  are  the  grout  experts. 

Carothers:  What  else  does  the  containment  scientist  have  to 
do? 

House:  Well,  containment  is  his  or  her  total  responsibility. 
Once  the  site  is  selected,  then  next  thing  we  have  to  produce  is  what 
we  call  the  containment  criteria  memo.  That  defines  the  plug 
locations,  the  types  of  plugs  and  material,  and  of  course  the  working 
point  depth,  or  depths  if  it  happens  to  be  a  multiple,  where  the 
radiation  and  pressure  monitors,  typically  known  as  RAMS,  will  go, 
and  how  many  there  will  be.  The  only  thing  the  containment 
scientist  does  not  specify  with  regard  to  the  down  hole  stemming 
plan  is  the  amount  of  magnetite.  That  is  defined  by  the  experi¬ 
menter.  We,  so  to  speak,  take  it  from  there. 

We  have  recently  been  required  to,  essentially,  develop  stem¬ 
ming  plans  for  underneath  the  device.  We  at  Los  Alamos  in 
particular  have  had  holes  that  were  deep  enough  to  require  that. 
There  was  one  in  Area  3  for  a  shot  called  Laredo,  which  was  deep 


Current  Practice 


539 


enough  that  it  actually  intersected  the  Paleozoic  rocks.  The 
environmental  folks  have  come  on  the  scene  and  said,  "Gee,  you've 
got  to  do  something  about  that.  You  have  a  potentially  preferential 
path  for  contamination  to  go  down  hole."  We  said,  "My  gosh. 
We've  just  thought  about  stuff  going  up.  We  don't  care  if  it  goes 
down  hole,  do  we?"  "Well,  you  better  start  thinking  about  that, 
because  we  care  about  it.  And,  we  carry  a  pretty  big  club,  us  folks 
at  environmental  restoration."  Or  the  Earthworms,  as  they  are  so 
fondly  known.  So,  we  have  specifications  for  the  downwards 
stemming  now. 


Carothers:  If  the  Livermore  containment  people  wanted  some 
logs  run,  would  they  go  through  you? 

Roth:  Not  normally.  They  have  their  own  support  at  the  Test 
Site,  and  they  pretty  much  determine  what's  required  to  carry  out 
the  containment  plan;  what  information  is  required  to  present  to  the 
CEP.  They  would  go  directly  and  say  they  need  a  gamma  log,  for 
example. 

Carothers:  These  logging  requirements  occur  certainly  well  in 
advance  of  when  the  device  gets  there,  don't  they? 

Roth:  Oh  yes.  It  may  be  as  much  as  a  year  in  advance.  That 
information  is  accumulated  and  analyzed  by  the  containment  scien¬ 
tist.  it  is  documented,  and  eventually  there  is  a  report,  or  an  input 
document,  that  is  presented  to  the  CEP  for  their  review. 

Carothers:  When  you  start  to  put  the  system  down  hole,  who 
supervises  that? 

Page:  Well,  the  Test  Director  owns  that  operation.  He  has  a 
project  group  that  works  on  accomplishing  it.  The  device  systems 
engineer  has  primary  responsibility  for  the  early  part  of  the  em¬ 
placement  -  -  getting  the  device  package  prepared,  moved  to  the 
hole,  and  inserted.  The  Test  Director's  right  hand  operational  guy 
is  again  a  construction  engineer,  because  he's  the  interface  with  the 
contractors.  We  always  have  a  plan  as  to  how  we're  going  to  do  the 
work,  and  the  implementation  of  that  plan  is  generally  managed 
between  those  two  engineers,  with  the  Test  Director  serving  in  an 
oversight  role. 


540 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Once  upon  a  time,  and  I  don't  mean  this  in  a 
derogatory  way  to  your  colleagues  at  Los  Alamos,  they  were  putting 
a  device  down  hole  and  they  didn't  put  in  a  cable  fanout  that  was 
called  for.  How  can  you  forget  a  fanout?  That's  a  big  thing,  and 
it  takes  some  time  to  do  during  the  down  hole  operation. 

Page:  What  can  I  say?  It  happens.  Lack  of  attention  to  detail, 
poor  criteria,  whatever.  You  hope  you  have  enough  checks  and 
balances  so  things  like  that  don't  happen.  We  depend  on  Raytheon, 
for  example,  to  keep  tabs  of  everything  that  happens  and  everything 
that  goes  into  the  hole.  They're  generally  successful,  but  if  they 
have  a  bad  design  drawing,  and  the  requirement  is  somehow  missed 
on  that  drawing,  they  would  miss  it.  We're  supposed  to  have 
enough  checks  and  balances  so  those  things  don't  happen. 

There  are  a  lot  of  things  like  that,  that  can  keep  a  Test  Director 
awake  at  night.  There  are  a  lot  of  things  to  worry  about,  because 
those  operations  are  complex  operations. 

Carothers:  Okay,  the  device  and  the  diagnostics  packages  are 
down  hole.  Now  you  have  to  do  the  stemming.  Who  does  the 
stemming?  Who  says,  "Okay,  the  gravel  goes  here,  and  there  is 
where  the  plugs  go,"  and  all  that? 

Page:  The  containment  program  people  have  the  responsibility 
for  designing  a  competent  stemming  plan.  But,  you're  right, 
somebody  has  to  do  it,  and  that's  an  interesting  situation,  in  a  sense. 

I  think  the  containment  group  has  the  philosophy,  and  I  think  they 
have  had  this  for  a  long  time,  that  they  need  to  maintain  a  presence 
at  the  hole  during  that  operation  to  assure  that  the  job  has  been 
done  right.  Now,  there's  been  a  lot  of  discussion  that  it  is  a  field 
operation,  and  the  construction  engineer  can  do  that  job  just  fine. 

I  could  argue  that  one  either  way,  but  in  my  opinion  the  way  that 
it  is  done  these  days  is  through  oversight  by  the  containment 
engineering  group.  The  actual  operation  is  directed  by  the  con¬ 
struction  engineer,  but  the  presence  of  the  containment  engineer  is 
the  element  that  assures  that  the  containment  packages  are  installed 
properly.  That's  the  way  I  see  it. 

There  is  another  element  that  supports  doing  the  stemming 
right.  That  is  the  Raytheon  Services  Nevada  role.  Their  job  is 
inspection  and  verification.  They're  given  a  very  detailed  design 
package  that  includes  all  of  the  specifications  for  all  of  the  features 


Current  Practice 


541 


that  are  supposed  to  go  into  the  hole.  There  is  a  gravel  specification, 
there's  moisture  criteria.  There  are  a  lot  of  elevation  features  they 
keep  track  of,  such  as  where  the  fanouts  are,  where  the  gas  blocks 
are,  where  the  bottom  gas  block  is,  where  the  top  gas  block  is  in  each 
fanout,  where  the  elevations  stop  when  you  change  materials,  where 
the  bottom  of  the  plug  is,  where  the  top  of  the  plug  is.  All  those 
features  are  called  out.  Many  of  them  are  measured  at  the  hole,  and 
RSN  rigorously  tracks  all  that  information  as  it's  established.  They 
essentially  establish  an  as-built  data  package  for  the  hole.  We 
depend  on  that  quite  a  bit  for  establishing  our  confidence,  once  the 
thing  is  done,  that  we  have  a  competent  containment  package. 

Carothers:  When  a  hole  is  stemmed,  how  do  you  know  the 
stemming  that's  supposed  to  be  in  the  hole  is  actually  in  there? 

Roth:  Well,  first  of  all,  there's  a  material  balance  on  the 
stemming  that  is  determined.  We  weigh  it,  or  volumetricaly 
measure  it. 

Carothers:  Bernie,  you  don't  volumetricaly  measure  it.  You 
weigh  it. 

Roth:  Okay.  We  weigh  it.  You're  right.  But  we  know  what 
the  weight  per  unit  volume  is,  and  so  from  that  point  we  get  a 
volumetric  quantity.  The  entire  depth  of  the  hole  is  volumetrically 
characterized  ahead  of  time.  So,  within  a  given  area  wherever  a 
given  plug  is  supposed  to  fit,  or  a  given  section  of  sand,  or  gravel, 
or  whatever  we  can  calculate  from  the  logging  information  what 
volume  of  material  fits  in  there.  Then  weighing  that  volume  of 
material  across  our  weightometer  instruments  at  the  top  of  the  hole 
can  pretty  well  determine  what  we  put  into  the  hole. 

Carothers:  How  do  you  know  the  volume  of  the  hole? 

Roth:  We  have  a  down  hole  logging  system  that  uses  a  laser  to 
bounce  a  beam  off  the  hole  wall,  and  records  the  distance  to  the 
wall.  Caliper  logs  were  used  up  until  a  few  years  ago,  and  they  still 
are  as  a  rough  guide.  But  we  now  have  an  instrument  that  goes  down 
hole,  bounces  a  laser  beam  off  the  adjacent  surface,  picks  up  the 
reflected  beam,  and  determines  what  the  distance  is.  That  beam 
rotates  in  a  full  circle  as  the  instrument  is  very  slowly  lowered  or 
raised  in  the  hole,  so  you  get  a  very  shallow  helix  measurement  that 
determines  the  volume  to  much  closer  than  one  percent.  So,  we 
really  know  what  the  volume  of  the  hole  is. 


542 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  One  of  the  things  that  came  as  a  surprise  to 
engineers,  physicists,  whoever,  in  the  1961,  '62  time  frame  was 
how  hard  it  was  to  pour  stemming  materia!  down  the  hole  and  not 
have  it  bridge.  It  seemed  incredible  that  you  could  have  a  four,  or 
six,  or  eight  foot  diameter  hole  and  the  material  would  bridge  in  it. 
How  could  that  be?  But  it  did,  and  when  the  stemming  slumped  it 
sometimes  broke  the  cables.  Do  you  ever  have  any  difficulty  of  that 
sort  these  days? 

Roth:  I  have  heard  of  those  kinds  of  problems,  but  since  I've 
been  the  Test  Director  I  have  had  neither  sloughing  or  bridging 
problems.  Those  were  problems  early  on  that  people  were  surprised 
about.  I  think  that  maybe  the  moisture  contents  of  the  sand  or 
gravel  would  let  it  build  up  on  pipe  strings,  so  it  would  tend  to 
bridge.  That  concern  was  still  present  as  late  as,  I  think,  1978.  The 
Test  Director  at  that  time  said  we  could  not  fill  the  emplacement 
pipe  with  grout  by  pouring  it  in  the  top.  It  would  never  make  it  to 
the  bottom. 

Carothers:  I  could  believe  that. 

Roth:  I  had  a  hard  time  believing  it.  The  pipe  was  9  SI5/8  drill 
stem  with  an  8st1/2  inch  ID,  or  whatever  that  dimension  is. 

Carothers:  Don't  you  grout  that  emplacement  pipe  from  the 
bottom  up?  That  is,  pump  the  grout  down  through  a  pipe  near  the 
bottom  and  force  it  up  the  pipe? 

Roth:  No.  But  yes,  we  did  that  for  years,  but  not  anymore. 
My  concern  was  a  safety  concern.  We  were  stabbing  a  tremmi  pipe 
down  the  emplacement  pipe  just  to  do  that  fill  operation.  First  of 
all,  it  was  time  consuming.  Second  of  all,  if  one  or  more  lengths  of 
that  tremmi  pipe  ever  got  loose,  it  had  a  rifle  barrel  right  down  to 
the  top  of  the  canister.  I  could  see  a  real  catastrophe  occurring,  and 
that  was  an  ongoing  concern,  especially  watching  some  of  the  crafts 
handling  those  tremmi  pipes.  It  never  happened,  but  it  was  a 
concern  to  me.  These  days  we  just  put  the  concrete,  mixed  with  a 
bentonite  solution,  into  the  top  of  the  hole  and  let  it  free  fall. 

Carothers:  How  do  you  know  it's  full? 

Roth:  Again,  by  material  balance  we  know  it's  full.  The  inside 
of  a  pipe  is  readily  calculable,  and  there's  not  much  question  about 
how  much  volume  is  involved.  Once  it  is  full  we  put  a  bull  plug  on 


Current  Practice 


543 


top  of  it  as  a  precaution.  That  probably  isn't  necessary,  but  it  gives 
everybody  a  warm  fuzzy  feeling.  That's  what's  being  done  today 
with  respect  to  filling  the  emplacement  pipe. 

Carothers:  How  about  knowing  that  the  stemming  was  em¬ 
placed  as  it  was  designed  to  be? 

Page:  We  make  every  effort  to  install  it  just  as  designed, 
because  if  it  meets  the  criteria  it  makes  everybody's  life  a  lot 
simpler.  Then  you  don't  have  to  deal  with  deviations,  and  they  can 
be  a  real  problem.  There's  a  lot  of  motivation  to  put  the  stemming 
in  just  as  the  stemming  plan  specifies. 

Carothers:  I  do  believe  that.  So,  the  hole  is  stemmed,  and  the 
plugs  are  in.  At  that  point  your  job  is  about  done  isn't  it? 

Page:  Getting  close.  There's  another  couple  of  days  of 
worrying  about  final  dry  runs,  and  analyzing  the  containment 
records  and  the  containment  plan.  One  of  the  final  jobs  of  the  Test 
Director  is  to  present  the  as-built  stemming  plan  to  the  Test 
Controller's  panel.  That's  done  on  D  minus  1. 

Carothers:  Yes,  and  that's  when  an  event  called  Galena  came 
to  a  halt.  As  I  recall,  there  was  considerable  to-do  over  the 
possibility  that  there  was  a  thirty  foot  or  so  void  in  the  stemming  on 
Galena.  How  could  that  be,  Jim?  Why  couldn't  you  convince 
people  that  wasn't  the  case? 

Page:  Well,  I  was  the  Test  Director  for  Galena,  and  we  had  a 
number  of  different  kinds  of  information  that  we  had  to  try  and 
interpret.  We  had  stemming  switches,  we  had  a  measure  of  the 
quantity  of  material  we  put  in  the  hole,  and  we  had  strain  gauges  on 
the  pipe  at  the  surface,  and  above  and  below  the  canister.  So,  there 
was  a  lot  of  different  intelligence,  and  when  it  was  all  analyzed 
through  a  rational  process,  you  could  arrive  at  some  conclusions. 

We  became  aware  that  we  had  a  problem  over  the  couple  of 
days  that  we  were  stemming  one  part  of  the  hole.  We  had  strain 
gauge  readings  that  changed  over  a  weekend,  after  we  had  passed 
that  point  in  the  stemming.  We  had  other  changes  that  indicated  the 
material  was  moving  around.  We  alerted  the  Los  Alamos  containment 
community,  and  gave  them  the  information  we  had.  We  told  the 
Test  Controller  we  had  this  concern,  but  that  we  were  proceeding 
to  complete  the  stemming.  As  people  thought  about  it,  and  did 


544 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


their  own  analyzing,  Los  Alamos  asked  for  a  more  formal  review  of 
the  issue.  As  that  started  to  come  into  place  we  decided  we 
wouldn't  proceed  until  the  Panel  was  notified.  The  approach  was 
to  poll  the  Panel  without  pulling  them  together,  but  people  weren't 
comfortable  with  that,  and  it  was  decided  that  wasn't  sufficient,  so 
a  Panel  meeting  was  called. 

That  was  how  it  went.  There  were  independent  looks  at  the 
data.  People  relying  on  their  own  experience,  and  making  their  own 
interpretations,  felt  there  was  enough  uncertainty  that  we  couldn't 
go  ahead  without  a  formal  review.  We're  still  totally  satisfied  that 
we  did  not  have  a  void  there. 

Carothers:  Sure.  But  the  important  thing,  for  the  Panel,  was 
you  couldn't  prove  it  one  way  or  the  other.  And  so  people  on  the 
Panel  then  said,  "Well,  in  that  case  we  have  to  assume  that  void  is 
there." 

Page:  I  can't  argue  with  that.  I  think  that's  a  reasonable 
attitude.  Now,  you'd  like  to  be  able  to  say  that  you  have  absolute 
certainty  of  what's  going  on  a  thousand  feet  underground,  but  we 
can't  always  do  that. 

Carothers:  There  was  a  Panel  meeting  on  a  Saturday  afternoon 
in  Las  Vegas,  and  after  hearing  what  was  presented,  the  Panel  felt 
the  shot  could  go  ahead.  So,  you  fired  it,  and  it  performed  just  fine, 
as  far  as  the  containment  aspects  were  concerned. 

Page:  It  did.  Radiation  didn't  get  high  in  the  hole  at  all. 

Carothers:  Neither  Laboratory  has  done  a  line-of-sight  shot  for 
a  long  time.  If  one  were  needed  it  would  be  like  starting  all  over, 
wouldn't  it? 

Page:  I  don't  know  where  we  stand  with  regards  to  being  able 
operationally  to  do  one  of  those,  but  we  recently  did  re-certify  our 
HE  closure  design.  About  four  years  ago  we  thought  we  were  going 
to  do  a  shot  like  that,  and  we  knew  there  would  be  a  large  line  of 
sight.  So  we  rejuvenated  an  old  technology,  where  we  drew  from 
the  old  design  drawings  that  we  had  available,  and  from  the 
experience  of  people  who  had  been  there.  I  was  one  of  the  people 
who  had  been  in  on  the  early  development  of  that  system  back  in 
the  late  sixties  and  early  seventies.  We  were  able  to  rebuild  the 
machine,  and  we  did  one  test,  with  new  people.  They  were  all  new 


Current  Practice 


545 


people  doing  the  work,  and  they  demonstrated  that  it  closed  very 
nicely.  There  was  ,a  situation  where  twenty  years  had  passed,  and 
we  had  not  lost  the  technology. 

Carothers:  It  gives  you  to  think  though. 

Page:  Oh,  you  bet  it  does.  But  now  there's  a  bridge  for  another 
ten  years,  perhaps,  if  ten  years  from  now  somebody  wanted  to 
develop  one  of  those,  we  have  three  or  four  young  people  who,  if 
they're  still  at  the  Lab,  could  do  it  then.  I'll  be  long  gone,  but  those 
people  might  still  be  around. 

Carothers:  One  thing  that  I  think  has  been  true  at  both 
Laboratories  -  -  I  will  leave  DNA  out  because  they  have  a  different 
set  of  problems  in  that  they  have  to  protect  millions  of  dollars  worth 
of  samples  -  -  is  that  there  is  inherently  a  kind  of  conflict  of  interest 
between  the  containment  people  and  the  field  people.  Your  job  as 
the  Test  Director  would  be  easier,  and  the  shot  quicker  and  cheaper 
to  do,  if  you  didn't  have  to  do  all  the  logging,  and  special  stemming, 
and  put  in  cable  gas  blocks,  and  so  on. 

Scolman:  I  think  one  way  of  looking  at  it  is,  going  under¬ 
ground,  particularly  with  the  containment  criteria  we've  got  now, 
puts  a  buy-in  cost,  a  base  cost  on  any  shot  that  is  so  high  that  what 
you  do  on  the  shot  does  not  appreciably  effect  the  cost  of  the  shot. 
In  other  words,  the  difference  in  cost  between  a  very  minimal  test 
and  a  very  maximal  test  is  certainly  not  as  much  as  it  would  have 
been  if  it  wasn't  for  the  containment. 

Carothers:  I've  heard  the  argument  put  the  other  way  -  -  that 
the  shots  are  so  complicated  and  expensive  today  that  what  you  do 
for  containment  is  only  a  small  part  of  the  cost. 

Scolman:  In  some  sense,  if  what  you  count  as  costs  for 
containment  is  what  is  necessary  to  run  an  event  through  the  CEP, 
and  the  additional  containment  hardware  you  put  in,  that  may  be 
true. 

But,  first  off,  there's  the  fact  that  you  do,  indeed,  need  to  drill 
holes,  which  requires  the  maintenance  of  a  drilling  capability  both 
for  the  emplacement  holes  and  the  post-shot  sampling..  You  do, 
indeed,  need  to  have  plants  that  generate  the  kind  of  stemming 
material  you  use.  You  do,  indeed,  need  to  do  all  the  logging  and 
those  kind  of  things. 


546 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Then  you  put  in  the  cost  of  just  maintaining  the  Test  Site  —  the 
EPA,  the  weather  service,  all  of  these  people  who  are  there 
regardless  of  how  complex  the  event  is. 

Carothers:  Yes,  but  you  can't  fairly  charge  that  against 
containment.  Those  people  would  be  there  if  you  were  doing 
atmospheric  shots. 

Scolman:  Well,  that's  true. 

Carothers:  After  Baneberry  life  for  you  as  the  Test  Director 
must  have  changed.  You  had  a  lot  of  other  things  that  you  now  had 
to  do  to  prepare  a  shot,  and  fire  a  shot. 

Scolman:  Yes,  of  course.  The  TEP  was  never  a  particular 
problem.  One  didn't  worry  about  getting  shots  through  the  TEP; 
one  worried  mightily  about  getting  shots  through  the  CEP.  The 
other  thing  was  that  the  operational  requirements  that  came  after 
Baneberry  were  much,  much  different  than  they  were  before.  We 
used  to  draw  a  line  between  Area  4  and  9.  if  it  was  a  Livermore  shot 
we  just  cleared  above  that  line.  If  it  was  a  Los  Alamos  shot  we 
cleared  below  that.  Now  we  clear  the  whole  forward  area  on  every 
shot. 

And  there  was  a  push  made,  largely  driven  by  NVO,  which 
said,  "Okay,  let's  get  everything  out  of  the  forward  area  that  we 
don't  need  to  have  there."  The  reconfiguration  studies  that  were 
done  really  didn't  lead  to  an  awful  lot  other  than  we  moved  some 
things  that  had  been  out  in  the  forward  area  back  into  Frenchmen 
Flat.  Some  of  those  changes,  which  in  general  increased  costs,  were 
not  necessarily  involved  directly  with  containment,  but  more  with 
how  one  reacted  if  you  had  a  containment  problem  when  you  fired. 
One  of  the  things  on  Baneberry  that  got  people's  attention,  other 
than  the  fact  that  it  vented  and  got  off-site,  was  the  fact  that  we  did, 
indeed,  contaminate  some  people  and  some  facilities.  A  lot  of 
changes  were  made  to  prevent  that  from  happening  again. 

Brownlee:  There's  always  been  a  curse,  here  at  Los  Alamos, 
that  I  haven't  quite  known  how  to  fight.  It  has  been  a  very  insidious 
thing,  because  down  through  the  years,  after  Baneberry,  we  never 
had  another  failure.  And  worse  than  that,  we  didn't  even  have  a 
seep.  So  there  has  been  the  attitude,  "Why  should  we  do  anything 
different  than  we've  been  doing?  We  had  those  experiences,  we  did 
these  things,  and  since  then  we've  never  had  a  single  problem  of  any 


Current  Practice 


547 


kind.  Why  then  do  we  need  these  people  working  in  containment? 
Let's  just  keep  doing  everything  the  way  we're  doing  it,  and  get  rid 
of  all  of  those  people." 

And  that  attitude  is  still  around.  The  idea  is  that  we  only  need 
one  person  now,  we  don't  need  five  or  the  six.  We  don't  need  any 
containment  research  now,  because  everything  is  doing  all  right. 
It's  easy  to  be  logical,  but  that  doesn't  win  the  argument.  It's  very 
hard  to  make  an  argument  that  can  win  against  that  attitude. 
Livermore,  meanwhile,  had  two  episodes,  and  that  helped,  because 
we'd  say,  "There  are  still  things  we  don't  know."  And  then  the 
DNA  has  had  things  happen,  and  that  helps,  but  then  the  argument 
is,  "Why  should  we  hire  people  to  work  on  some  of  those  things?  Let 
them  do  that.  It's  not  any  of  our  affair." 

And  it's  that  argument  which  is  the  real  reason  why  we  had  the 
same  stemming  plan  forever,  and  we  did  our  plugs  the  same  way 
forever.  We  never  could  win  the  argument  with  our  local  engineers 
that  there  needed  to  be  any  change.  You  don't  need  to  do  it  better 
if  what  you're  doing  is  all  right.  We  said,  "We  can  do  it  better,"  but 
that  didn't  matter. 


548 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


549 


21 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 

There  have  been  several  events  where  the  containment  design 
has  failed,  for  one  reason  or  another.  Some  of  these,  such  as  Des 
Moines,  Eel,  Pike,  and  Bandicoot  have  been  mentioned  in  earlier 
chapters.  In  the  course  of  the  interviews  other  events  were  de¬ 
scribed  by  people  who  were  personally  involved  with  them.  In  many 
cases,  even  though  there  may  have  been  extensive  post-shot  efforts 
to  understand  the  reason  or  reasons  for  a  particular  failure,  often 
there  is  not  agreement  of  a  definitive  cause.  What  follows  is  not  an 
attempt  to  analyze  and  develop  an  accepted  scenario  for  these 
events,  nor  is  it  a  complete  listing  of  all  of  the  events  that  have  had 
substantial  releases. 

There  is  one  point  that  should  be  mentioned.  Following  the 
detonation  of  a  device  in  a  tunnel,  while  there  may  be  satisfactoriy 
containment  of  all  of  the  radioactive  products,  there  is  often  an 
accumulation  of  gases  which  make  it  hazardous  to  reenter  the 
tunnel.  Hydrogen  and  carbon  monoxide  in  particular  form  explo¬ 
sive  mixtures  in  air,  given  suffiently  high  concentrations.  (See  the 
description  in  Chapter  Sixteen  of  the  hydrogen  explosions  which 
took  place  following  the  detonation  of  the  Tamalpais  device.)  There 
may  be  some  level  of  radioactive  gases  in  the  tunnel,  none  of  which 
have  leaked  out  to  the  atmosphere  due  to  the  efforts  made  pre-shot 
to  form  gas-tight  barriers  to  such  leakage. 

However,  after  the  detonation  reentries  must  be  made  to  re¬ 
cover  the  experimental  samples  and  various  equipment,  and  to 
prepare  the  tunnel  complex  for  future  experiments.  At  a  time 
determined  by  the  Test  Controller,  which  may  be  several  days  after 
the  event,  a  ventilation  system  can  be  activated  to  replace  the  air  in 
the  tunnel  with  fresh  air.  The  hydrogen  and  carbon  monoxide  and 
other  inert  gases  can  be  safely  dispersed  into  the  atmosphere.  Any 
radioactive  products  are  passed  through  filters,  and  the  biologically 
inert  noble  gases  are  released  in  monitored  low  level  amounts  over 
a  period  of  time.  As  a  result  of  this  tunnel  ventilation  process 
detectable  amounts  of  activity  may  possibly  be  found  on-site. 


550 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


For  example,  the  Misty  Rain  and  Mighty  Oak  events  both  were 
successfully  contained  by  the  definitions  in  the  CEP  charter  and  the 
Nuclear  Test  Ban  Treaty.  No  activity  found  its  way  to  the  atmo¬ 
sphere  following  either  event,  but  there  was  radioactivity  in  the 
tunnel  complex  itself.  During  the  ventilation  process  activity  was 
detected  on-site,  and  both  events  are  listed  as  having  a  controlled 
release.  This  is  an  operational  procedure  that  is  not  part  of  the 
containment  design,  and  does  not  indicate  a  containment  failure. 

Gnome  -  -  12/10/61 

Weart:  In  addition  to  shots  like  Marshmallow  and  Gumdrop, 
another  shot  that  helped  me  formulate  some  of  my  thoughts  in  the 
early  days  was  Gnome,  in  the  Carlsbad  area.  It  did  have  a  prompt 
sampling  pipe  on  it.  It  also  had  a  tunnel  with  a  line-of-sight  pipe 
down  it.  It  was  reentered,  and  I  was  on  that  reentry  team.  The 
observations  there  —  the  fact  that  the  line-of-sight  that  went  straight 
up  pinched  off  and  nothing  came  out,  even  though  we  were  trying 
to  get  samples  through  it,  the  fact  that  the  line-of-sight  pipe  that  we 
wanted  to  seal  off  quickly  may  have  contributed  somewhat  to  the 
release,  the  fact  that  the  buttonhook  principle  wasn't  successful  in 
that  particular  case,  and  it  didn't  seal  things  off  —  did  contribute  to 
some  of  my  early  thinking.  And  some  of  the  early  DNA  designs 
followed  that  thinking.  We  went  along  on  that  course  until  we  had 
a  problem,  and  then  we  had  to  change  things. 

Carothers:  From  your  observations  on  the  Gnome  reentry,  to 
what  would  you  attribute  the  leak  that  occurred?  You  say  the  line- 
of-sight  pipe  may  have  contributed. 

Weart:  Well,  Gnome  was  in  a  location  with  a  bedded  stratig¬ 
raphy,  and  the  line-of-sight  pipe  went  right  along  parallel  to  those 
beds.  The  combination  of  the  cavity  growth  and  the  line-of-sight 
pipe  energy  caused  the  ground  to  open  up  preferentially,  all  along 
the  bedding  planes.  And  that  allowed  energy  to  squirt  out  of  the 
cavity,  and  out  into  the  tunnel.  Whether  it  would  have  happened 
if  the  bedding  planes  hadn't  been  there,  I  don't  know,  but  it  appears 
to  have  been  a  plane  of  weakness  that  allowed  separation  to  occur. 

Carothers:  On  reentry  could  you  see  radioactivity,  injected 
material,  along  those  planes? 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


551 


Weart:  Yes.  Whether  it  would  have  gone  on  the  same  path 
without  a  bedding  plane  you  don't  know. 

So,  because  of  that,  the  design  for  a  subsequent  shot  there, 
called  Coach,  which  was  never  fired,  would  have  avoided  this 
situation  by  having  an  incline  going  up  on  the  buttonhook  part.  That 
way  you  didn't  have  a  plane  intersecting  both  the  working  point  and 
the  tunnel.  And  in  a  lot  of  the  rocks  that  we  fired  in  subsequently, 
alluvium  and  the  tuffs,  we've  usually  not  had  a  bedding  plane 
problem  to  worry  about. 

Higgins:  I  and  three  other  people  reentered  the  shaft  and 
tunnel,  and  recovered  one  of  the  pieces  of  experimental  hardware 
about  December  20,  1  96 1 .  I  can  say  with  certainty  that  there  was 
no  leakagr  down  the  drift  or  the  Iine-of-sight  pipe.  The  gas  seal  door 
was  bypassed  in  a  clay  seam  that  was  a  foot  or  so  above  the  top  of 
the  tunnel.  There  was  no  evidence  of  anything  except  steam  in  the 
fracture  or  shaft.  Leakage  must  have  come  from  the  cavity  after  it 
formed,  through  that  seam,  bypassing  ail  the  engineered  features. 


Eagle  -  -  12/12/63 

Brownlee:  I  approached  containment  from  the  point  of  view 
of  containment  of  LOS  shots,  and  I  saw  the  whole  thing  in  terms  of 
closing  pipes  with  various  kinds  of  things  to  keep  energy  from 
getting  out  after  they  had  made  their  measurements.  Now,  as  I  saw 
it,  the  Livermore  experimentalist  had  an  upper  hand  to  a  greater 
degree  than  they  did  here.  And  that  started  with  Al  Graves  and  Bill 
Ogle;  they  were  determined  to  allow  me  to  try  to  keep  things  from 
coming  out.  At  Livermore,  it  seemed  to  me,  closures  were  kind  of 
secondary.  With  Los  Alamos,  closures  were  kind  of  first;  you  had 
to  do  that. 

When  Eagle  came  along  it  was  for  sure,  I  thought,  going  to 
allow  the  experimenters  to  get  their  information,  but  there  was  no 
way  to  close  the  pipe.  I  was  convinced  that  Eagle  was  going  to  leak. 
Almost  by  accident  I  toid  Al  Graves,  "I  think  Eagle  will  come  right 
out.  I  don't  think  it's  designed  right."  We  had  the  treaty  then,  so 
that  could  have  been  a  violation  of  the  treaty  if  it  did  that.  It 
bothered  Al  when  1  told  him  I  thought  it  would  leak.  So,  he  called 


552  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

up  the  Livermore  Director,  who  was  then  Johnny  Foster,  and  as  a 
result  we  had  a  meeting  in  Las  Vegas.  That  was  the  summer  of  '63, 
and  Eagle  was  fired  later  that  year. 

I  took  a  lot  of  heat,  because  Livermore  was  offended  that  AI 
had  asked  them  to  tell  him  about  the  Eagle  design.  But  I  came  home 
after  the  meeting  and  did  some  calculations,  and  I  was  still  con¬ 
vinced  that  it  would  come  out.  So  I  have  to  admit  I  took  a  certain 
amount  of  perverse  pleasure  when  it  did  come  out,  because  I  had 
been  taking  a  lot  of  heat. 

Now,  I  am  absolutely  convinced  that  Eagle  was  not  fired  as 
designed.  Los  Alamos  people  went  out  and  watched  them  put  Eagle 
downhole.  They  came  back  and  said,  "Here's  how  that  was 
assembled."  I  said,  "It's  not  supposed  to  be  that  way."  And  so,  I 
think  the  amount  of  energy  that  came  out  was  more  than  there 
should  have  been. 

The  difference  was  this.  In  the  very  bottom  of  the  pipe  there 
was  to  be  a  series  of  lead  rings.  My  guys  say  that  all  those  lead  rings 
were  piled  right  on  top  of  one  another,  like  a  lead  collimator.  I'm 
absolutely  convinced  that  there  was  a  lead  cylinder  at  the  very  place 
where  there  should  not  have  been  a  lead  cylinder.  The  ground  shock 
had  no  way  of  penetrating  that  lead  in  time  to  close  the  pipe.  It 
squeezed  off,  in  time,  but  obviously  a  lot  of  stuff  went  by.  Of 
course,  it  was  an  awkward  thing  because  the  Livermore  guys  didn't 
dare  own  up  that  they  hadn't  done  it  right,  so  they  assured  the 
system  that  they  had  done  it  exactly  as  drawn.  But  the  Los  Alamos 
people  at  the  Test  Site,  who  lived  there,  said,  "Those  lead  baffles 
were  put  cheek  to  jowl."  And  there  were  a  lot  of  them,  so  there  was 
just  a  big  lead  cylinder. 

We  had  thought  about  Iine-of-sight  pipes  for  some  time,  but  I 
regarded  Eagle  as  the  first  modern  LOS  shot  because  it  was  the  first 
LOS  shot  with  the  treaty  in  place.  There  had  been  the  argument, 
"Let  the  energy  pass  and  then  close  the  pipe."  Now,  that's  right, 
in  the  sense  that  the  Eagle  fireball  didn't  have  any  radioactivity  in 
it.  Is  that  all  right?  I  said,  "It's  not  all  right  if  it  blows  everything 
apart." 

Before  Eagle,  people  were  saying,  "It  won't  do  that."  And  I 
was  saying,  "There's  enough  energy  that  it  will.  It  should  do 
damage."  And  it  did.  There  was  more  energy  there  than  I  was 
expecting,  but  as  I  said,  I  think  there  was  a  reason  for  that.  But  after 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


553 


Eagle  we  no  longer  had  the  debate  about  letting  energy  pass  before 
you  closed  the  pipe.  So,  the  concept  of  closing  everything  fast  was 
solidified,  reinforced,  and  became  doctrine  after  Eagle,  for  us. 
Eagle  was  a  big  experience  for  us. 

1  think  the  Eagle  design,  if  it  had  been  emplaced  right,  would 
almost  have  worked.  I  think  it  would  have  changed  history  if  it  had 
been  emplaced  right.  As  it  was,  it  looked  as  though  the  design 
allowed  all  that  energy  out,  and  I  don't  believe  that.  But  Eagle 
heavily  influenced  the  next  designs. 


Double  Play  -  -  06/15/66 

LaComb:  There  was  radiation  behind  the  overburden  plug 
within  like  the  first  second.  The  radiation  got  outside  the  overbur¬ 
den  plug  within  minutes,  but  it  was  a  slow  release.  It  wasn't 
dynamic;  it  was  throttled  through  about  a  six  inch  hole  and  about 
a  two  inch  hole.  These  holes  were  each  about  eight  feet  long,  so 
there  was  quite  a  bit  of  throttling  there.  And  we  had  a  very  slight 
seep  through  the  ventilation  valves  and  the  gas-seal  door,  and  a  seep 
up  through  the  cable  bundles. 

I  think  we  got  permission  to  ventilate  about  a  day  or  two  later, 
and  we  pumped  gas  reading  better  than  a  thousand  R  per  hour  out 
of  the  tunnel  complex  for  better  than  two  days.  That  was  as  high 
as  the  rams  went.  And  that  was  where  we  were  reading  what  was 
coming  out  of  the  tunnel  complex.  Of  course  the  filters,  after  the 
first  ten  minutes,  were  a  thousand  R  and  stayed  there. 

We  had  three  what  were  called  DBS  boxes,  which  were 
supposed  to  fire  closed.  When  it  broke  loose  and  came  out,  it  hit 
those  boxes  and  the  test  chamber  moved  about  forty  feet  towards 
the  portal.  We  were  very  fortunate,  because  the  door  of  the 
chamber  ended  up  right  beside  the  little  tiny  car-pass  alcove  we  had. 
If  it  hadn't,  nobody  would  have  ever  been  able  to  get  in.  Those  DBS 
boxes  moved  over  eighty  feet. 

Further  out  there  were  these  huge  glass  bubbles  —  just  huge 
bubbles,  of  glass.  They  were  six  feet  in  diameter.  They  weren't  full 
round;  they  were  hemispheres,  as  a  rule.  I  assume,  because  of  the 
prompt  release,  they  were  from  molten  rock  from  the  cavity.  And, 
because  the  DBS  boxes  were  slowing  everything  down  there,  the 
melt  was  stagnating  there,  more  or  less,  and  depositing  that  glass. 


554  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

But  there  was  enough  gas  coming  with  the  glass  that  it  formed  those 
bubbles.  The  same  kind  of  bubbles  were  seen  in  the  tunnel  on  Red 
Hot.  It  was  the  same  kind  of  failure  in  the  same  time  frame.  So, 
I  think  that  glass  must  have  come  from  the  cavity. 

There  were  also  glass  stalactites  hanging  down  from  the  ceiling. 
That  glass,  on  the  rock  itself,  I'm  not  sure  whether  it  was  where  the 
tunnel  had  been  melted  and  dripped  down  in  place,  or  whether  it 
was  sprayed  on  and  then  dripped  down. 

It  was  kind  of  funny,  because  when  we  first  reentered  that  area, 
it  was  several  R.  As  we  walked  forward,  into  the  stemming  region, 
it  went  down  to  ten  mR.  Everything  had  come  out  so  fast  that  area 
was  clean. 


Door  Mist  -  -  08/31/67 

LaComb:  On  Door  Mist,  as  I  recall,  radiation  started  to  show 
up  in  the  tunnel  in  something  like  eleven  seconds.  There  were  two 
TAPS  -  -  tunnel  and  pipe  seals  -  -  in  the  pipe  string,  and  two  or  three 
DBS  boxes.  On  reentry  we  found  that  the  close-in  TAPS  door  had 
closed  down  about  thirty  degrees.  It  had  been  caught  by  something, 
and  looked  like  that  must  have  been  a  two  foot  square  chunk  of  steel, 
because  that  door,  as  strong  as  it  was,  was  just  folded.  We  had  put 
a  pile  of  sandbags  forward  of  the  walkway  door  in  the  close-in  TAPS; 
there  was  about  a  three  foot  space  between  the  sandbags  and  the 
door.  That  door  had  at  least  a  ten  inch  wide  flange  embedded  in  the 
concrete.  We  never  did  find  the  door  that  was  in  the  walkway. 
Apparently  the  sandbags  had  gone  in  motion,  and  they  just  took  it 
some  place  out  of  this  world. 

The  far-out  TAPS  had  a  hole  eroded  above  it  which  was  about 
a  foot  to  a  foot  and  a  half  high  by  eleven  feet  wide. 

Carothers:  ]oe,  you  say  the  walkway  door  was  gone.  It  had  to 
be  in  the  tunnel  somewhere,  right? 

LaComb:  Well,  there's  so  much  rubble  you  don't  know  where 
anything  is,  and  the  radiation  levels  are  such  that  a  lot  of  times 
you've  only  got  five  or  ten  or  fifteen  minutes  to  look  around.  If  we 
had  spent  any  effort  looking  for  that  door  it  would  have  been  called 
"natural  curiosity,"  and  that's  not  of  benefit  to  the  program.  I'm 
sure  it  was  in  there  someplace,  because  we  didn't  see  any  signs  of 
melt  on  Door  Mist. 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


555 


When  we  reentered  from  the  overburden  plug,  just  inside  the 
overburden  plug  it  looked  like  a  prehistoric  monster.  The  steel  sets 
were  all  in  place,  the  tie  rods  were  still  in  place,  but  all  the  lagging 
was  gone;  there  wasn't  even  any  ashes  around  that  you  could  see. 
All  we  could  see  going  on  down  the  tunnel  was  just  this  string  of  steel 
sets.  It  looked  like  a  skeleton.  And  the  back  of  the  tunnel  was  just 
flat. 

1  was  team  chief  on  that  reentry.  We  didn't  have  any 
ventilation  because  the  vent  lines  were  down,  so  we'd  take  three 
steps  forward,  stop,  and  say,  "What's  the  readings?"  "It's  like  a 
hundred  mR,  and  about  five  hundred  ppm's  CO",  and  so  much, 
maybe  five  percent  explosive  mixture.  We'd  take  three  more  steps 
and  stop.  About  this  time  my  face  mask  had  fogged  up,  and  I  was 
trying  to  use  my  hands  like  a  windshield  wiper.  We  got  about  twenty 
feet  forward  of  the  plug  and  it  went  to  over  a  thousand  parts  per 
million  CO,  and  over  ten  percent  explosive  mixture.  Our  face 
masks  were  fogging  up  so  fast  we  couldn't  keep  up  with  it.  At  that 
time  I  said,  "This  is  unsafe,  guys.  We  will  go  around  the  other  way." 

Scroll  -  -  04/23/68 

Olsen:  Probably  the  earliest  event  where  material  properties 
really  made  a  difference  to  anybody  was  Scroll,  up  on  Pahute,  where 
they  were  hunting  for  a  medium  that  would  decouple  as  much  as 
possible.  So,  they  wanted  to  know  the  in-situ  density.  Well,  we 
found  an  air-fall  tuff  of  very  low  density;  it  was  1 .3  to  1 .4. 

Carothers:  It  contained? 

Olsen:  Well,  it  probably  would  have  if  we  had  plugged  the 
holes  properly. 

Carothers:  What  was  wrong? 

Olsen:  Again,  it  was  a  lack  of  appreciation  for  the  time  scale 
of  things,  and  what  can  happen  after  the  initial  bang.  We  poured 
some  sand  down  the  hole,  and  we  also  poured  some  cement  in. 
Except,  we  poured  the  cement  in  at  a  location  where  it  would  be 
eaten  up  by  any  ordinary  subsurface  collapse,  which  is  what  we  got. 
So,  because  the  only  plug  we  had  was  eaten  up  by  the  subsurface 
collapse,  all  the  granular  stemming  drained  out,  and  there  was  an 
open  hole  to  the  surface,  and  lo  and  behold,  it  started  leaking. 


556  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

In  retrospect,  some  of  these  things,  in  facta  lot  of  these  things, 
you  think,  "God,  why  were  we  so  dumb?  That's  obvious."  Well, 
at  the  time  it  wasn't  obvious.  We  didn't  appreciate  subsurface 
collapses,  we  didn't  really  have  any  information,  any  data  base,  that 
said  that  a  subsurface  collapse  was  likely  to  go  to  six  cavity  radii,  give 
or  take  some  number.  We  didn't  have  that  kind  of  information. 

At  the  time  of  Scroll  we  didn't  know  much  about  what 
happened  on  Pahute  Mesa  at  all.  We  didn't  have  much  experience 
with  the  normal  geology  up  there,  the  density  two,  give  or  take  a 
little,  stuff  that  we  see  all  the  time  now.  Much  less  did  we  know 
about  one  of  these  unusual  sites  that  we  went  hunting  for,  for  Scroll. 
So,  as  we  started  to  learn  things,  like  where  collapses  might  go  to, 
we  started  to  put  in  things  that  would  attack  that  problem. 

Carothers:  Well,  Rainier  had  been  fired  in  1957,  and  it  had 
a  subsurface  collapse.  There  were  extensive  post-shot  explorations 
done  at  the  Rainier  site  during  the  moratorium,  having  to  do  with, 
among  other  things  the  height  of  the  chimney,  and  so  on. 

Olsen:  That  is  true.  But  it  wasn't  appreciated  at  the  time  we 
did  Scroll. 


Hupmobile  -  -  1 1/18/68 

Olsen:  Hupmobile  was  a  disaster.  It  was  a  vertical  line-of-sight 
shot,  and  the  experimenters  wanted  collimators  in  the  pipe,  because 
they  did  not  want  shine  bouncing  off  the  walls,  so  we  putin 
collimators  at  almost  every  pipe  joint.  This  was  a  fairly  largeline-of- 
sight  -  -  it  went  up  to  several  feet  in  diameter  at  the  surface.  We  had 
these  relatively  massive  collimator  rings,  and  for  ease  of  installation 
they  had  a  little,  very  thin  metal  lip  around  the  outside.  So,  they 
just  sat  on  a  pipe  joint,  and  there  was  virtually  no  strength  in  the 
thing  that  attached  them  to  the  pipe. 

When  the  flow  came  along,  going  upward,  and  started  dumping 
energy  on  the  downstream  side  of  these  things,  this  little  rim  of  fairly 
thin  metal  that  was  holding  them  in  place  gave  way.  So,  these  rings 
went  up  the  pipe,  became  a  tangled  mass  of  stuff  at  the  top,  and 
blocked  all  of  the  valves.  We  recovered,  on  reentry,  something  like 
sixteen  hundred  pounds  of  twisted  up  collimator  rings  at  the  top  of 
the  line-of-sight  pipe.  We  could  even  identify  which  collimator  it 
was  that  had  been  torn  loose. 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


557 


There  was  a  transient  ground  shock  closure  at  the  bottom,  and 
it  took  like  twenty-five  seconds  or  so  for  the  cavity  to  find  the  weak 
spot  and  erode  it  enough  that  it  really  blew  its  cork.  There  was  a 
good  sized  cloud,  but  the  flow  was  going  through  the  pipe,  so  it 
didn't  erode  as  much  dirt  and  dust  as  Baneberry.  The  release  was 
smaller  than  on  Baneberry,  but  I  think  it  was  within  an  order  of 
magnitude.  It  was  big. 

We  had  a  large,  several  story  exposure  station  at  surface 
ground  zero,  on  top  of  the  pipe,  and  because  of  the  venting  that 
large  exposure  station  caught  fire,  and  we  lost  a  large  share  of  all  the 
things  that  were  in  it.  The  experimenters  didn't  like  that  at  all. 


Baneberry  -  -  12/18/70 

Weart:  I  have  a  little  trouble  recalling  the  exact  time  people 
started  to  look  for  more  favorable  geology  for  the  tunnel  shots. 
Certainly  a  marked  turning  point  within  the  entire  community, 
recognizing  the  influence  of  geology  and  so  forth,  was  with  the 
Baneberry  event. 

Carothers:  You  were  part  of  the  investigating  committee. 
Looking  back  on  it,  what  is  your  view  of  the  understanding  that  was 
reached  at  that  time,  which  may  still  be  the  right  one? 

Weart:  As  I  recall,  there  were  a  couple  of  circumstances  which 
we  felt  contributed  to  the  Baneberry  release.  One  was  the  fact  that 
whereas  events  of  this  particular  yield  were  normally  detonated  in 
alluvium,  in  unsaturated  rock  where  we  had  come  to  expect  a  certain 
phenomena,  Baneberry  was  detonated  in  saturated  clay.  There  was 
a  very  high  water  content,  and  much  more  effective  coupling  of 
energy  into  ground  motion. 

That  simply  wasn't  anticipated.  In  one  simplistic  way  of 
looking  at  it,  with  that  equivalent  seismic  energy  it  looked  like  a 
much  bigger  event.  And  therefore  by  our  criteria,  which  were 
empirical,  of  course,  it  was  underburied.  I  think  the  water  may  have 
contributed  in  another  sense  in  that  it  provided  an  immense 
reservoir,  a  far  greater  reservoir  than  usual  of  not  easily  condensable 
gases.  That  left  the  cavity  at  a  very  high  pressure  for  a  very  long 
time.  And  the  third  circumstance  was  a  fault,  through  which  the 


558 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


eventual  release  occurred,  which  intersected  an  interval  under¬ 
ground  which  saw  these  high  pressures.  It  took  a  long  time;  it  was 
three  minutes  or  so  before  the  release  started. 

So,  it  may  have  been  that  a  combination  of  all  of  those  things 
were  necessary,  and  that  any  one  of  them,  by  itself,  would  not  have 
caused  trouble.  You  don't  know,  of  course,  in  retrospect,  but  I 
think  all  three  of  those  things  contributed  to  the  Baneberry  release. 

Carothers:  And  that  focused  attention  on  the  geology. 

Weart:  Yes,  it  did.  There  was  the  fault,  there  was  the 
unanticipated  degree  of  saturation,  the  moisture,  and  the  clay. 
People  thought  that  if  we  had  been  smart  enough,  and  had  looked 
for  these  things,  we  might  have  anticipated  that  there  could  be  a 
problem.  So,  maybe  we  ought  to  start  looking  for  those  things  in 
the  future. 

Hudson:  The  primary  problem  with  Baneberry,  we  think,  had 
to  do  with  geology.  I  say  we  think,  because  there  is  still  not  a 
complete  agreement  as  to  what  caused  the  Baneberry  release.  And 
we  had  not  given  as  much  attention  to  what  I  should  almost  call  civil 
engineering,  prior  to  Baneberry,  as  we  have  afterwards. 

Carothers:  What  do  you  mean  by  civil  engineering? 

Hudson:  Engineering  design  based  on  the  strengths  of  the 
overburden.  Behavior  of  the  overburden.  We  had  basically  relied 
on  the  density  of  the  overburden  in  the  past.  And  built  into  that 
density  was  all  the  features  that  led  to  successful  containment  of  past 
events,  that  we  had  been  ignoring.  Such  as  strength.  Clearly,  while 
you  may  have  the  proper  overburden  density  in  a  fluid,  it's  pretty 
easy  to  imagine  how  some  of  the  device  material  could  get  to  the 
surface. 

In  the  case  of  Baneberry  we  were  almost  in  a  fluid,  in  that  the 
working  point  was  in  a  saturated  clay  zone.  We  were  still  operating 
almost  entirely  from  experience.  We  didn't  really  know  what  to 
expect  from  the  saturated  clay.  And,  we  really  didn't  know  that  we 
were  in  saturated  clay.  All  we  knew  was  that  they  were  having 
trouble  constructing  the  hole,  a  lot  of  trouble  drilling. 

But  as  far  as  the  other  parameters  were  concerned,  it  appeared 
to  be  a  good  high  impedance  medium,  which  would  cause  the  pipe 
to  close,  and  it  seemed  to  be  favorable  for  containment.  At  the 
same  time,  there  were  some  of  us  who  had  questions  we  would  have 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


559 


liked  to  have  had  answered  before  Baneberry,  but  I  don't  think  any 
of  us  who  had  questions  really  had  reason  for  believing  it  was  going 
to  vent.  We  just  had  unanswered  questions  we  would  like  to  have 
had  answered  before  Baneberry.  Had  we  answered  all  those 
questions,  it's  not  clear  whether  we  had  enough  understanding  of 
containment  at  that  time  to  have  avoided  Baneberry. 

Carothers:  It's  my  understanding  that  it  did  not  vent  through 
the  line-of-sight  pipe.  That  closed  off. 

Hudson:  That's  true.  I  think  the  pipe  had  little  or  nothing  to 
do  with  the  venting  on  Baneberry.  The  overburden  structure  was 
too  weak  to  contain  the  event.  As  a  result,  as  the  cavity  grew, 
probably  fissures  were  formed  close-in  and  hot  steam  entered  the 
fissures,  and  pushed  them  outward.  And  it  found  the  easiest  path 
to  the  surface  and  came  out  through  a  crack,  known  now  as  the 
Baneberry  fault.  My  personal  opinion  is  that  had  that  fault  not  been 
there,  it  would  still  have  come  out  through  the  path  of  least 
resistance.  It  might  have  been  a  crack  some  place  that  wasn't 
associated  with  the  fault,  but  I  believe  it  still  would  have  come  out. 

The  conditions  that  you  needed  to  not  have  a  hydrofracture 
out  of  the  cavity  just  weren't  there  on  Baneberry.  You  need  some 
strength  to  keep  hydrofractures  from  occurring,  and  apparently  on 
Baneberry  we  didn't  have  that,  so  gases  came  to  the  surface. 
Another  reason  why  I  think  it  is  related  to  hydrofracture  is  because 
it  took  three  and  a  half  minutes.  If  it  had  been  something  really 
prompt,  associated  with  the  line-of-sight  pipe,  it  probably  would 
have  been  at  the  surface  in  well  under  a  minute.  I  think  we  stepped 
into  Baneberry  largely  due  to  our  ignorance. 

Rambo:  There  were  a  lot  of  calculations  that  were  done  after 
Baneberry,  using  1-D  calculations.  They  were  not  successful.  In 
going  back  and  looking  at  this  residual  stress  field  again,  those 
calculations  seemed  to  show  a  residual  stress  field.  I  think  the  one 
person  who  came  closest  to  having  some  success,  using  l-D  codes, 
was  Norton  Rimer,  from  S-Cubed.  He  alluded  to  weak  clay  at  the 
shot  point  as  being  a  possibile  reason. 

Things  kind  of  got  left  that  way  for  a  number  of  years.  In  the 
meantime,  we  were  developing,  with  Don  Burton,  who  was  the  code 
physicist,  much  easier  ways  of  working  with  this  2-D  code  called 
TENSOR.  For  instance,  we  found  that  instead  of  having  to  zone 


560 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


everything  as  constant  squares  for  different  layers  for  different 
angles,  and  then  try  to  fit  it  together,  which  was  almost  impossible, 
we  could  pull  all  the  zones  into  a  straight  line,  so  we  could  then  put 
our  material  models  in  without  having  to  do  it  by  hand.  We  could 
do  that  with  a  computer  code.  And  so,  what  we  call  constraint  lines, 
in  the  business  I'm  in,  were  put  into  this  code. 

As  the  codes  improved,  I  thought  we  could  go  back  and  do  a 
2-D  calculation  of  Baneberry.  So,  we  went  into  the  business  of 
assembling  this  Baneberry  calculation.  There  were  certain  features 
that  we  looked  at  and  said,  "Oh  my  gosh,  we  ought  to  put  this  in, 
or  we  ought  to  put  that  in."  There  had  been  a  lot  of  exploratory 
work  done  on  Baneberry,  after  the  shot,  to  pull  out  properties  that 
hadn't  been  measured  before  the  shot,  because  that  was  not  what 
we  did  in  those  days. 

One  of  the  things  I  identified  in  that  calculation  was  the  fact 
that  there  was  a  saturated  layer  up  to  a  certain  surface,  and  we  had 
to  put  that  in.  Above  that  layer  the  material  becomes  very  porous. 
And,  we  did  measure  strengths,  so  we  ought  to  put  this  weaker 
material  in  and  a  higher  strength  material  around  it.  The  geologists 
gave  us  a  picture  of  what  it  looked  like  in  cross  section,  and  there 
was  a  big  fault  going  off  to  the  side,  and  there  was  a  Paleozoic  hard 
rock  scarp  off  at  a  certain  distance.  We  put  all  this  together. 

Some  of  the  work  I  had  done  on  the  slifer  data  on  Baneberry 
indicated  to  me  that  it  was  very  weak  material,  down  in  the  working 
point  region.  What  I  had  developed  over  the  years  was  a  way  of 
looking  back  and  getting  a  rough  estimate  of  what  the  intercept  of 
the  particle  velocity  was,  and  if  it's  down  close  to  zero,  I  made  the 
assumption  that  it's  very  weak  rock.  If  there's  a  high  intercept,  then 
maybe  it's  a  stronger  rock.  Well,  Baneberry  just  went  right  through 
zero.  It  just  looked  like  a  fluid.  If  you  were  to  shoot  in  a  fluid,  the 
intercept  of  this  curve  would  be  down  at  zero.  Baneberry  looked  like 
that,  when  I  backed  out  from  the  data.  I  tried  to  back  out  some 
material  properties,  but  we  eventually  went  to  a  model  developed 
by  Ted  Butkovich  for  putting  this  together.  The  strength  curves  we 
used  came  from  rock  measurements  in  the  laboratory. 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


561 


We  ran  the  first  calculation,  and  essentially  it  showed  the  whole 
thing  going  belly  up,  in  terms  of  a  residual  stress  field.  It  happened 
on  the  first  try.  We  were  shocked,  because  we  had  not  had  any 
success  with  the  1-D  calculations,  but  the  2-D  calculations  showed 
this  effect  right  away. 

Probably  I  have  a  different  view  point  from  most  people  on  that 
shot.  There  is  a  layer  of  saturated  tuff  above  the  shot,  and  above 
that  there  is  a  very  porous  layer,  and  so  there  was  this  strong  wave¬ 
flattening  effect,  what  I  call  a  focusing  effect,  that  happened  when 
the  shock  wave  went  from  the  saturated  tuff  into  the  porous 
alluvium.  So,  we  saw  what  I  called  a  focused  event. 

That  was  an  important  learning  point  in  calculations,  I  felt  -  - 
that  you  could  get  this  kind  of  enhanced  ground  motion.  We  had 
looked  at  Tybo  before  we  had  looked  at  Baneberry,  and  so  when  I 
saw  this  saturated  layer  I  felt  that  it  was  going  to  cause  a  lot  of  things 
to  go  on  in  the  calculation  that  might  not  normally  happen.  And 
indeed,  we  saw  this  effect  in  the  Baneberry  calculation. 

One  thing  that  was  interesting  about  Baneberry  was  that  the 
fault  was  right  at  the  edge  of  this  wet,  saturated  area.  There  was  a 
pocket  of  saturation  that  did  not  go  flat  across  the  fault.  It  stopped 
at  the  fault,  according  to  what  the  geologists  told  us.  That  particular 
geometry  was  important  to  what  we  saw.  The  wave  going  out  caused 
a  lot  of  ground  motion  going  up,  along  one  side  of  the  fault,  and 
when  it  crossed  over,  the  saturation  was  different  and  the  motion 
was  less. and  that  tended  to  cause  a  lot  of  ground  motion  running 
along  one  side  of  the  fault  as  opposed  to  the  other  side  of  the  fault. 
That  was  probably  an  important  part  of  the  calculation,  in  that  you 
saw  a  lot  of  motion  on  the  fault. 

So  you've  got  motion  along  the  fault,  plus  an  almost  plane  wave 
rarefaction  that  comes  back,  and  you  get  a  lot  of  tensile  failure 
around  the  cavity  in  this  weak  material.  The  net  result  was  we  just 
didn't  end  up  with  any  residual  stress,  after  you  put  all  of  this 
together. 

Carothers:  To  oversimplify.  You've  described  a  mechanism 
where  you're  not  going  to  get  residual  stress,  and  where  there  will 
be  tensile  failures  in  a  weak  material.  That  sound  like  a  situation 
where  you  would  expect  a  lot  of  hydrofractures. 

Rambo:  Sure.  Plus  there  was  a  large  supply  of  water  to  drive 


that. 


562 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Camphor  -  -  06/29/71 

Camphor  was  a  line-of-sight  tunnel  event,  sponsored  by  San- 
dia,  which  was  originally  scheduled  to  be  fired  shortly  after 
Baneberry.  It  was  delayed  for  some  six  monthes  by  the  AEC 
investigation  of  the  Baneberry  release,  and  was  the  fourth  event 
fired  after  testing  was  resumed  with  the  Embudo  event  on  June  16, 
1971.  In  some  respects  its  containment  behavior  resembled  the 
Mighty  Oak  event  fired  some  fifteen  years  later.  There  was  a  release 
of  a  small  amount  of  gases,  where  Mighty  Oak  did  not  have  such  a 
release,  but  there  was  extensive  damage  to  all  of  the  equipment  and 
experiments  in  the  tunnel  itself,  and  the  loss  of  essentially  all  of  the 
tunnel  complex  due  to  the  fact  that  there  was  direct  communication 
from  the  cavity  to  the  various  drifts.  Jerry  Kennedy,  from  Sandia, 
was  the  Test  Director  for  Camphor. 

Kennedy:  Cypress  worked  perfectly  well,  from  a  containment 
viewpoint.  It  was  a  storybook  test  from  start  to  finish.  At  that  time 
what  I  think  was  going  on  was  the  DNA  events  were  quite  frequent, 
as  compared  to  now  in  these  later  years.  So  shots  were  happening 
numerous  times  a  year,  and  they  were  big  effects  tests,  and  they 
were  being  very  successfully  contained.  Clearly  the  containment 
plans  were  working.  So,  everybody  said,  "A  piece  of  cake."  I  think 
that  was  a  little  of  the  attitude,  but  that's  not  saying  people  were 
being  slip-shod  about  it. 

Then,  roughly  two  years  after  Cypress,  along  came  Camphor. 
The  containment  and  stemming  plan  changed  from  Cypress.  I'd  say 
it  was,  maybe,  more  daring.  We  were  going  to  use  less  stemming, 
because  we  had  convinced  ourselves  we  didn't  need  as  much  as  on 
Cypress.  These  DNA  shots  had  happened,  and  so  it  must  be  okay. 
You  could  follow  the  logic  that  said  it  was  well  designed.  We 
certainly  did  that.  Of  course,  it  did  not  contain.  We  didn't  have 
a  venting  to  the  outside,  but  it  was  a  complete  disaster  inside  the 
tunnel. 

We  had  a  couple  of  bigoverburden  plugs,  and  after  the  shot  we 
finally  decided  that  there  was  a  little  bit  of  geology  that  perhaps  we 
didn't  quite  understand,  around  the  forward  overburden  plug, 
which  was  at  the  aft  end  of  the  line-of-sight  pipe.  The  other  was  out 
at  the  main  gas  seal  closure.  That  was  a  big,  keyed-in  concrete  plug, 
which  was  designed  to  hold  overburden  pressure,  and  so  on.  As 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


563 


near  as  we  could  ever  tell,  a  leak  formed  around  the  outside  of  the 
close-in  plug,  through  a  crack  we  were  unaware  of,  went  around  the 
plug,  and  then  it  quickly  eroded  into  the  LOS  drift,  and  then  the 
work  drift. 

The  LOS  pipe  was  rolled  it  into  a  ball  at  the  forward  overbur¬ 
den  plug,  into  a  space  of  about  two  to  three  hundred  feet  long.  That 
was  originally  over  a  thousand  foot  string  of  pipe.  It  was  all  fairly 
compacted  right  up  against  that  overburden  plug.  You  just  don't 
really  realize  from  calculations  and  numbers  how  much  energy  there 
is  there,  and  what  it  can  do  to  things.  You  have  to  see  what  happens. 

The  flow  didn't  go  through  the  gas  seal  plug  in  the  main  pipe 
drift,  at  the  aft  end  where  the  diagnostics  were.  It  went  across  into 
the  parallel  work  drift,  and  then  went  through  the  plug  over  there. 
That  plug  had  all  the  cables  in  it;  all  the  instrumentation  cables  went 
through  it.  The  eventual  hole,  which  I  walked  back  through  on 
reentry,  was  through  that  area  where  the  cables  went  through.  It 
was  clean  as  a  whistle.  It  took  all  those  cables  out. 

The  gas  seal  door  was  the  final  thing  between  us  and  the  great 
out-of-doors.  It  was  a  swing-shut  door  which  you  closed  on  button 
up.  It  was  just  a  big  steel  swinging  door  with  big  seals.  It  was 
supposed  to  be  speced  at  a  thousand  psi  and  a  thousand  degrees. 

We  tried  to  test  that  door  for  leaks.  It  was  all  in  a  big,  grouted 
bulkhead,  and  we  worried  about  leaks  in  that  thing.  It  had  been 
there  for  a  long  time,  because  it  wasn't  a  one  shot  thing.  That  was 
there  for  all  time.  We  worried  about  leaks  in  that,  and  in  the  course 
of  preparation  we  had  closed  that  door  I  don't  know  how  many 
times.  At  night  on  the  late  shift,  when  people  didn't  need  to  be  in 
and  out  of  tunnel,  we  closed  that  thing,  sealed  it,  and  then  we  would 
pressurize  the  inside  with  big  blowers  and  compressors.  Then  we 
would  check  for  leaks  all  over  that  face.  We  did  it  with  little  squirt 
guns  with  soap  bubbles.  And  it  leaked.  We  pressure  grouted  that 
plug,  and  did  it  I  don't  know  how  many  times.  We  thought  we  were 
probably  wasting  a  lot  of  money,  because  it  was  a  massive  effort,  but 
I  think  it  saved  our  bacon  in  the  end. 

Inside  that  door  we  measured  the  temperatures  and  pressures, 
and  it  was  pretty  clear  we  had  a  bad  environment  right  at  the  door. 
Later  you  could  see  the  cables  that  were  inside  by  that  gas  seal  door, 
and  the  insulation  was  hanging  down  in  festoons.  It  was  really  the 
last  barrier,  but  it  held. 


564  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Carothers:  My  recollection  is  that  there  was  a  seepage  of  a  few 
hundred  curies  of  gas,  but  there  was  no  venting,  and  no  particulates. 

Kennedy:  That's  right.  It  took  about  one  minute  for  it  to  cut 
loose.  At  plus  thirty  seconds,  in  the  control  room,  we  were  patting 
each  other  on  the  back.  There  had  been  a  perfect,  flawless  count¬ 
down  through  zero  time.  Everything  turned  on  the  way  it  was 
supposed  to,  and  it  was  ideal  technically,  from  the  data  standpoint. 
Everybody  was  really  beginning  to  feel  wonderful. 

Then  I  got  a  call  at  plus  one  minute  and  they  started  giving  me 
RAMS  readings.  "RAMS  reading  inside  the  overburden  plug  is 
greater  than  10,000R."  That  meant  the  meter  was  pegged,  and 
they  didn't  know  what  it  was.  Well,  the  one  by  the  LOS  pipe  you 
would  expect  to  go  very  high,  because  it  was  in  a  high  shine  area. 
And  then  they  said  the  same  thing  inside  the  other  overburden  plug, 
in  the  work  drift.  And  then  at  the  gas  seal  door.  When  they  said 
that  I  had  this  terrible  sinking  feeling.  That's  when  we  all  turned  as 
one  and  looked  at  the  CCTV  picture  of  the  portal,  just  waiting  to 
see  it  belch  fire,  or  whatever. 

Carothers:  And  after  about  plus  one  minute  or  maybe  two, 
probably  everybody  looked  at  you  and  said,  "Well,  you're  the  Test 
Director.  What  are  we  gonna  do,  Jerry?" 

Kennedy:  I  remember  quite  well  what  happened.  I  was  in  the 
control  room,  and  we  had  a  hot  line  to  the  Test  Controller's  table. 
A  guy  handed  me  that  phone,  and  said,  "They  want  to  talk  to  you," 
and  it  was  Byron  Murphy.  He  was  the  Scientific  Advisor  for  the 
event,  and  he  was  sitting  down  there  with  Bob  Thalgott,  who  was  the 
Test  Controller.  He  said,  "Jerry,  I  know  you're  going  to  be  a  little 
busy  up  there,  but  do  you  think  you  might  be  able  to  stop  down  and 
see  Bob  and  I?"  I  said,  "Yes  sir,  I  think  I  can."  I  remember  walking 
down  the  hall  to  the  War  Room,  like  I  was  on  stilts  —  kind  of  in  a 
shocked  feeling.  It  was  a  bleak  day. 

Carothers:  You  did  reenter? 

Kennedy:  Yes,  after  a  long  while.  I  can't  tel!  you  the  date  right 
now,  but  it  was  many  moons  later.  Of  course,  right  at  first  it  was 
hotter  than  heck.  The  tunnel  was  hot  all  the  way  out  to  the  gas  seal 
door,  so  the  whole  tunnel  complex  was  contaminated.  To  get  back 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


565 


to  the  drift  where  the  pipe  was  we  mined  parallel  drifts  all  the  way 
back,  because  we  couldn't  go  through  the  old  way  -  -  it  was  too  hot, 
and  too  difficult  to  decon,  so  we  mined  new  drifts. 

Carothers:  That  wasn't  just  a  gas  leak  in  the  tunnel.  It  sounds 
as  though  that  tunnel  was  in  direct  communication  with  the  cavity, 
and  that  there  was  device  debris  all  over  the  place. 

Kennedy:  Oh  yes.  It  was  very  bad.  We  parallel  mined  all  the 
way  back  in,  parallel  to  the  pipe  drift  itself,  and  made  cross  cut 
entries  at  interesting  points  into  the  drift.  In  some  places  we 
couldn't  go  still,  so  we  would  just  put  a  hole  in  so  we  could  insert 
some  intrumentation  and  look  around.  Some  drifts  we  crossed  in 
the  reentry  mining  we  had  to  stem  because  they  were  rather  hot 
areas.  There  were  places  where  you  couldn't  stop  and  look  around. 
In  5  R  fields  you  don't  loiter,  and  we  didn't. 

Carothers:  You  had  the  overburden  plugs,  and  the  gas  seal 
door.  Did  you  have  any  closure  hardware  on  the  pipe? 

Kennedy:  Other  than  the  front  end  we  had  a  thing  called  a 
dimple  machine  up  front,  which  was  to  cut  off  flow  in  the  LOS  pipe 
close  in.  We  had  some  experiment  recovery  packages  that  we  hoped 
we  would  be  able  to  mine  in  and  pick  up  and  take  out,  which  we  did 
do.  Then  farther  out  we  had  our  fast  gate,  and  then  one  of  those 
gravity  fall  doors  as  a  backup,  the  way  that  DNA  did  it. 

Mighty  Oak  -  -  04/10/86 

Carothers:  Bob,  what  are  your  thoughts  about  Mighty  Oak? 

Bass:  Mighty  Oak.  I  cannot  give  an  official  statement  about 
what  happened  on  Mighty  Oak.  That's  somebody  else's  province, 
but  I  know  what  happened.  I  can  tell  you  exactly  what  happened 
on  Mighty  Oak.  On  Mighty  Oak  there  was  too  much  pipe  flow, 
immediately,  and  the  MAC  doors  were  taken  out.  We  did  not  have 
a  FAC,  the  fast  acting  closure,  so  those  doors  were  our  first  line  of 
defense. 

The  MAC  doors  came  across,  and  we  monitor  how  those  doors 
move,  and  where  they  are.  Those  doors  came  together,  and  they 
got  just  about  to  where  they  overlapped,  and  they  slowed  down. 
That  is  the  time  when  the  pipe  flow  gets  there.  Now,  pipe  flow  is 
my  field.  That's  where  I  really  have  worked  on  measurements  -  - 


566 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


what's  going  on  in  the  pipe,  and  in  the  stemming  material  around 
it.  We  monitor  those  pressures,  and  we  know  when  things  get  down 
there  to  the  doors.  We  saw  that  the  pressure  got  there  when  the 
doors  were  just  beginning  to  overlap.  They  didn't  hit,  but  just  as 
they  obscured  the  pipe,  they  stopped.  Right  at  that  same  time,  after 
this  happened,  the  pressure  gauge  in  front  of  the  GSAC,  which  is 
fifty  feet  further  down,  picked  up  pressure. 

Now,  there  are  two  flows  of  material  to  analyze.  There  is  the 
radiation  blowoff,  and  material  from  the  closure  of  the  reverse  cone 
spool.  Both  of  those  produce  material  running  down  the  pipe. 
There  are  approximately  ten  kilograms  of  blowoff  material  in  an 
event  like  Mighty  Oak.  It  moves  at  two  to  three  centimeters  per 
microsecond,  so  it  gets  down  to  the  MAC  doors  when  they  are  are 
still  back,  but  there  is  hardly  any  pressure,  because  it's  a  very  low 
pressure  situation.  It's  just  a  little  puff  of  ten  kilograms  of  material. 
You  hardly  can  see  it. 

But  as  the  doors  close,  the  second  flow  comes  along,  and  the 
second  flow  is  the  material  injected  by  the  ground  shock  beyond  the 
reverse  cone,  closing  it  down.  You  have  water  vapor  from  the 
stemming  material,  you  have  iron  vapor  from  the  pipe,  and  the 
pressure  at  that  point  is  appoximately  200  kilobars.  When  that  goes 
on  axis  that  takes  you  to  megabars,  so  you  vaporize  a  little  iron  and 
everything  else.  That  material  comes  down  at  a  half  centimeter  per 
microsecond.  It  gets  to  those  doors  in  1  5  milliseconds,  which  is 
exactly  when  the  doors  meet. 

Okay,  something  is  happening  here,  and  what  I  firmly  believe 
is,  because  of  an  error  and  a  change  in  the  pipe  structure  up  around 
the  reverse  cone,  they  had  a  much  heavier  pipe  than  usual.  They 
had  a  heavy  pipe  there  to  support  the  helix,  and  then  they  took  the 
helix  out,  but  left  the  heavy  pipe  in.  So,  we  have  a  lot  of  pipe  now. 
On  two  events,  Misty  Rain  and  Mighty  Oak,  that  shrapnel  followed 
the  early  blowoff  flow  down,  got  there  just  as  the  doors  were  coming 
together,  knocked  the  doors  out,  and  so  the  second  pressure  came 
through.  When  you  get  to  those  doors  there's  a  hole  big  enough  that 
we  had  500  psi  against  the  GSAC,  which  is  the  next  closure  down. 

Anyway,  we  knocked  that  hole  in  the  pipe.  I  am  firmly 
convinced  that  we  injected  some  close-in  iron  that  got  down  there, 
and  knocked  a  hole  in  the  doors.  With  the  doors  knocked  out  early, 
then  you  had  a  path  for  stemming  flow.  So,  when  the  stemming  got 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


567 


there  after  thirty  to  forty  milliseconds,  a  huge  amount  of  stemming 
went  through  those  front  doors,  and  that  took  out  the  next  door 
back,  and  it  kept  right  on  going.  We  just  had  a  ram  running  down 
through  there,  and  it  took  everything  out. 

Carothers:  Dan,  what  do  you  think  happened  on  Mighty  Oak? 

Patch:  Well,  I  think  the  focus  we  had  on  Mighty  Oak  was  really 
what  we  think  of  as  material  property  problems,  both  with  the  site 
itself,  and  also  interacting  with  the  design.  This  was  one  of  the 
designs  in  a  series  that  used  a  taper  that  was  larger  than  had  been 
done  in  the  past.  It  used  stemming  that  was  weaker  than  had  been 
used,  and  the  weaker  sections  were  brought  in  closer.  Also,  if  I'm 
not  mistaken,  some  of  the  grout  formulations  were  twiddled  toward 
the  weaker  direction.  And,  the  site  itself  was  highly  saturated;  there 
was  very  little  air  void. 

Carothers:  That's  supposed  to  be  good. 

Patch:  It's  good  if  you  don't  overdrive  the  stemming,  but  if 
you  overdrive  the  stemming,  then  you  can  generate  a  lot  of  pipe 
flow,  which  Bob  Bass  feels  was  a  very  serious  problem,  because  it 
stalled  the  doors.  One  of  the  things  about  these  gates  is,  if  they're 
only  partially  closed,  and  not  fully  closed,  their  strength  is  very  low, 
because  they're  not  fully  supported.  My  feeling  was  the  doors  were 
knocked  out,  and  there  was  enough  extrusion  so  the  stemming 
continued  to  flow. 

All  of  these  materials,  in  comparison  even  to  water,  certainly 
in  comparison  to  air,  have  a  very  high  modulus.  They're  very  stiff. 
A  tiny  amount  of  flow  makes  a  great  deal  of  stress  relief,  because 
the  materials  are  almost  incompressible.  So,  I  think  there  was  a  low 
state  of  stress  down  the  stemming  column,  and  flow  started  through 
what  was  probably  a  relatively  small  path  down  through  the 
stemming.  That  built  up  stresses  on  the  TAPS  that  caused  it  to  fail. 
The  thermal  stresses  and  the  pressure  loads  on  the  TAPS  were  such 
that  it  couldn't  stand  the  load. 

Carothers:  In  thinking  about  your  small  path  I  am  reminded  of 
an  interesting  tape  recording  that  was  made  on  Camphor.  You  may 
have  heard  it.  When  they  fired  Camphor,  for  whatever  reason  they 
had  some  microphones  in  the  tunnel.  For  a  few  seconds  it's  quiet, 


568  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

and  then  there's  a  little  hissing  noise  that  in  a  few  seconds  builds  up 
to  where  it  sounds  like  a  train.  That  opening  was  eroded  from  very 
small  to  very  big  very  quickly. 

Patch:  I  haven't  heard  that  recording,  but  we  think  that's 
exactly  what  happened  -  -  that  Mighty  Oak  had  a  relatively  small 
path,  which  was  capable  of  supplying  a  credible  amount  of  gas. 
There's  a  fair  amount  of  volume  back  there,  but  nothing  compared 
to  the  volume  of  the  cavity.  It  wasn't  really  a  nasty  flow  at  first,  but 
once  the  TAPS  let  go,  and  it  began  to  really  flow  through  that  path, 
I  think  it  just  cleaned  things  right  out  of  there.  And  also  I  think 
there's  a  lot  of  evidence  to  suggest  that's  how  Hybla  Fair  failed  also 
-  -  that  the  real  failure  of  the  stemming  was  not  a  prompt  stemming 
blowout,  but  from  an  flow  that  just  eroded  the  stemming  out. 

I  don't  think  that  Mighty  Oak  was  an  impossible  test.  I  think 
one  could  successfully  design  for  that  site,  and  I'm  not  even 
convinced  that  one  couldn't  use  that  pipe  taper,  and  successfully 
contain  that  shot. 

Carothers:  What  would  you  change? 

Patch:  Well,  that's  a  fair  question.  I  think  one  of  the  things 
Sandia  has  done  is  make  the  doors  on  those  gates  about  four  times 
stronger,  and  they've  speeded  the  gates  up  significantly.  An 
improvement  they've  done  a  lot  of  work  on,  and  are  about  ready  to 
field,  is  to  use  a  propellant,  a  powder  charge,  if  you  will,  to  drive 
the  doors,  as  opposed  to  gas  from  gas  bottles.  I  think  we  could  speed 
the  doors  up  enough  so  we'd  have  a  better  chance  against  them 
getting  stalled  in  the  ways.  1  think  we've  got  doors  that  are 
significantly  stronger,  like  factors  of  about  four.  Maybe  that's  not 
enough.  I  don't  know. 

Ristvet:  While  I  was  at  S-Cubed  I  predicted  Mighty  Oak  would 
be  Mighty  Oak  about  six  months  before  the  event. 

Carothers:  What  led  you  to  that  conclusion? 

Ristvet:  I  happened  to  be  training  Dave  Bedsun  at  the  time,  and 
doing  reentries.  That  was  my  only  involvement,  because  my  Pacific 
work  really  was  occupying  my  time.  But  I  did  take  the  time  to  come 
out  and  help  Dave  do  a  reentry,  primarily  on  Misty  Rain.  Once  we 
got  into  Misty  Rain,  which  was  really  the  first  shot  we  reentered  in 
the  kind  of  detail  you  needed  to  see  everything,  it  became  obvious 


Sometimes  The  Dragon  Wins 


569 


that  the  only  thing  that  had  been  saving  us  from  a  containment 
failure  on  the  previous  shots,  including  Huron  Landing  and  Miner's 
Iron,  was  what  I  call  serendipidous  block  motion.  We  were  shooting 
the  closures  out  before  the  stemming  even  got  to  them.  And,  if  you 
didn't  have  something  holding  the  stemming  in,  it  would  go  down 
to  the  test  chamber,  and  of  course,  the  cavity  would  follow  shortly 
thereafter. 

Misty  Rain  was  just  fortuitous.  We  were  a  gnat's  eyebrow  from 
Mighty  Oak  on  Misty  Rain.  I  said  that  because  of  the  Mighty  Oak 
geologic  setting,  the  kind  of  block  motion  we  needed  probably 
would  not  occur  in  the  LOS  drift.  There  would  be  block  motion  on 
the  one  fault,  but  it  would  occur  too  late.  This  was  based  on  the 
breaking  of  timing  wires,  and  other  studies  we  had  done,  so  we  kind 
of  knew  when  block  motion  triggered  with  respect  to  ground  shock. 
If  Pac  Tech's  calculations  were  anywhere  near  being  correct,  most 
of  the  stemming  would  be  past  the  fault  before  the  fault  would 
move.  My  advice  to  DNA  at  the  time  was  that  it  would  cost  more 
money  to  fix  Mighty  Oak  than  there  was  equipment  underground. 
And  so  my  advice  was  to  go  ahead  and  shoot  it,  and  pray  that  there 
would  be  the  block  motion  to  keep  the  stemming  in. 

Carothers:  That  must  be  a  characteristic  of  a  particular  site  or 
a  particular  area,  because  there  are  a  lot  of  tunnel  shots  that 
behaved  perfectly  well. 

Ristvet:  Really  only  N  tunnel  is  where  we've  seen  a  lot  of  block 
motion,  and  that's  because  of  the  frequency  of  the  faults  and 
fractures.  Also  the  orientation  of  them  is  such  with  respect  to  the 
residual  stress  field  that  they  move  easier  than  they  do  in  P  tunnel, 
say.  There  we  virtually  don't  have  any  faults  or  fractures,  and  in  P 
tunnel  we  don't  see  very  much  block  motion. 

Carothers:  Ed,  is  there  a  reasonable  consensus  on  the  reasons 
for  the  damage  that  happened  on  Mighty  Oak?  I  have  heard  various 
opinions  expressed. 

Peterson:  There  are  a  few  people  in  the  community  who  say, 
and  believe,  that  they  understand  exactly  what  happened  on  Mighty 
Oak.  I  think  that  those  people  have  never  been  able  to  convince  a 
reasonable  group  of  other  people.  And  I  think  if  you  really  had 


570 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


enough  sound  scientific  evidence  to  show  what  happened,  every¬ 
body  would  be  willing  to  accept  it.  People  are  out  looking  for  the 
answer. 

.  So,  it's  interesting.  DNA  formed  the  Containment  Advisory 
Team  that  has  looked  at  Mighty  Oak  in  great  detail.  I  think  the 
people  on  that  committee  have  tried  to  look  at  it  very  objectively. 
Everybody  has  been  trying  to  find  an  answer,  and  I  think  we  have 
been  unsuccessful  in  finding  something  that  we  can  point  to  and  say, 
"It's  because  of  this  that  Mighty  Oak  did  what  it  did." 


571 


22 


About  the  Containment  Evaluation  Panel 

The  Laboratory  or  Agency  which  conducts  a  nuclear  detona¬ 
tion  is  responsible  for  the  selection  of  the  site,  and  for  the  design  of 
any  features  necessary  for  containment.  The  Manager  of  the  DOE 
Nevada  Office  is  responsible  for  the  safe  and  proper  conduct  of  the 
experiment,  including  the  requirement  that  successful  containment 
be  accomplished.  The  Containment  Evaluation  Panel  serves  as  an 
advisory  body  to  the  Manager,  NVO.  It  is  the  responsibility  of  the 
Chairman  of  the  Panel  to  give  due  consideration  to  the  judgments  of 
the  individual  Panel  members,  summarize  them,  and  make  a  recom¬ 
mendation  to  the  Manager  as  to  whether,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  containment  design,  the  event  should  proceed. 

How  well  and  how  effectively  the  Panel  has  operated  is,  in 
some  measure,  reflected  in  the  fact  that  there  have  been  only  four 
releases  of  radioactive  material  since  June  of  1971 .  For  these  four 
cases  the  total  amount  of  material  released  was  quite  small  -  -  a  total 
of  some  10,000  curies  -  -  and  was  principally  due  to  the  seepage  of 
noble  gases  from  the  cavity.  A  comparison  of  the  post-CEP  releases 
with  a  few  of  the  major  pre-CEP  releases,  and  the  total  release  into 
the  atmosphere  for  the  atmospheric  detonations  at  the  NTS  is  given 
in  Table  1.  Recall  that  for  an  atmospheric  event  the  total  fission 
fragment  inventory  is  released.  For  underground  events  the  release 
is  fractionated  to  some  degree  by  the  passage  of  the  material  through 
the  earth,  the  tunnel,  the  pipe,  or  whatever  the  leak  path  was,  and  so 
the  comparison  numbers  should  be  regarded  with  that  reservation  in 
mind. 


572 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


TABLE  1 


AT  T,  POST-B  ANFBERRY  RELEASES 


Event 

Date 

Release(in  Ci) 

Camphor 

1971 

220 

Diagonal  Line 

1971 

6,800 

Riola 

1980 

3,100 

Agrini 

1984 

690 

Total 

10.810 

SOME  MAJOR  PRE-CEP  RET. EASES 

Event 

Date 

Release(in  Ci) 

Platte 

1962 

1,900,000 

Eel 

1962 

1,900,000 

Des  Moines 

1962 

11,000,000 

Baneberry 

1970 

6.700.000 

Total 

21.500.000 

Release  from  NTS  Atmospheric  Tests  1951  -  1963 

12,000,000,000ci 

About  the  Containment  Evaluation  Panel 


573 


To  the  extent  that  the  Panel  has  been  successful,  or  deserving 
of  some  credit  for  the  record  of  containment,  that  success  is  based 
on  several  things,  the  most  important  of  which  are  these: 

First:  The  Manager,  NVO,  and  officials  of  DOE  and  its 
predecessor  Agencies  have  been  consistently  and  strongly  commit¬ 
ted  to  the  need  for  successful  containment  of  the  events.  They  have 
also  been  consistently  supportive  of  the  Panel's  activities  and 
recommendations. 

The  CEP  Charter,  in  Section  III  -  DOE  Policies,  Paragraph  D, 
has  the  following  words: 

Considerations  of  cost,  schedules,  and  test  objectives  shall  not 
influence  the  containment  review  of  any  test. 

This  charge  is  unusual  in  its  breadth  and  in  the  authority  it  gives 
to  the  Panel.  Since  the  formation  of  the  Panel  in  1971,  every 
Manager,  NVO,  and  every  person  in  the  Headquarters  who  has 
headed  the  Division  of  Military  Applications,  or  the  Office  of 
Military  Applications,  or  the  Deputy  Assistant  Secretary,  Military 
Applications,  when  asked,  has  emphasized  that  it  was  their  intention 
that  this  charge  be  followed  by  the  Panel.  No  member  of  any 
sponsoring  organization  has  ever  challenged  it,  to  the  Chairman's 
knowledge,  or  sought  through  those  channels  to  modify  or  overturn 
a  recommendation  of  the  Panel.  And,  there  have  been  occasions 
when  the  Panel's  actions  have  caused  considerable  costs  and  sched¬ 
ule  delays  for  a  proposed  event. 

Second:  The  Members  and  Alternate  Members  of  the  Panel  do 
not  serve  as  representatives  of  any  organization.  This  is  a  critical 
point.  They  are  individuals  with  experience  in  the  field  of  under¬ 
ground  testing,  and  knowledge  relevant  to  the  containment  of 
underground  detonations,  who  are  nominated  to  serve  as  indepen¬ 
dent  experts  and  give  their  individual  judgment  concerning  the 
containment  aspect  of  an  event. 

The  Panel  members  do  not  vote  as  to  whether  an  event  is 
expected  to  be  successfully  contained,  with  the  majority  opinion 
being  the  one  that  necessarily  goes  forward.  The  concern  of  a  single 
member  regarding  some  feature  of  a  containment  design  has  many 
times  been  demonstrated  to  be  sufficient  to  require  further  review 
and  resolution  before  the  event  can  continue. 


574 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


House:  I  remember  one  case  where  Bill  Twenhofel,  on  the 
Rousanne  event,  gave  it  a  C!  Well,  a  C  is  the  death  knell. 

Carothers:  I  would  not  send  something  forward  that  carried  a 
C.  In  such  a  situation  I  generally  suggest  that  possibly  the 
sponsoring  Laboratory  might  wish  to  have  the  opportunity  to 
present  further  information  and  explanation  before  I  send  my 
recommendation  to  the  Manager. 

House:  And  boy,  did  we.  And  as  it  turned  out,  it  was  a  fairly 
simple  matter.  There  was  a  site  characterization  technique  we  had 
employed  that  was  a  little  new  to  the  Panel,  and  Bill  didn't 
completely  understand  it.  So  we  journeyed  to  his  lair  at  the  USGS 
in  Denver,  and  explained  to  Dr.  T  what  it  was  we  were  doing,  and 
what  we  thought  was  significant  about  it,  and  how  it  substantiated 
our  structural  interpretation.  He  said,  "Oh,  I  see.  I  understand 
that."  So,  he  changed  his  statement,  and  we  went  ahead. 

It  can  be  a  difficult  thing  to  convince  skeptical  critics  of 
nuclear  test  work  that  the  Panel  is  not  some  kind  of  rubber-stamp 
group,  staffed  by  the  sponsoring  organizations  to  give  a  public 
facade  of  responsibility  for  their  activities.  Individual  integrity  has 
unfortunately  been  so  often  shown  to  be  lacking  in  governmental 
processes  that  to  claim  it  for  the  Panel  members  is  usually  met  with 
a  raised  eyebrow  and  clearly  expressed  doubt.  Fortunately,  the 
record  of  the  Panel  members’  activities  and  actions  has  been  suffi¬ 
cient  to  convince  anyone  willing  to  consider  the  evidence  that  the 
members  do,  indeed,  seriously  and  honestly  review  the  containment 
aspects  of  an  event  in  the  full  spirit  of  the  Charter. 

Third:  The  sponsoring  organizations,  and  their  acceptance  of 
a  need  for  successful  containment,  are  an  essential  part  of  the 
process.  Here  again,  the  matter  of  integrity  and  honesty  is 
paramount.  The  Panel  fundamentally  takes  the  position  that  the 
material  presented  to  them  is,  in  fact,  correct  within  the  limits  of  the 
Laboratory's  and  the  presenter's  knowledge.  A  mistake  may  be 
made,  but  the  assumption  is  that,  if  so,  it  is  an  honest  mistake,  and 
not  a  lie.  A  clear  example  is  the  number  that  is  given  for  the 
maximum  credible  yield  of  the  device.  This  is  one  of  the  most 
important  factors  in  determining  the  depth  of  burial,  and  the  overall 
phenomenology  of  the  event.  That  number  as  given  is  accepted  by 


About  the  Containment  Evaluation  Panel 


575 


the  Panel  as  the  best  that  can  be  given  for  the  particular  device,  and 
that  uncertainties  which  might  exist  in  that  number  are  fully 
accounted  for  in  the  containment  plan. 

In  the  same  way,  the  Panel  accepts  as  fact  that  the  containment 
plan  as  reviewed  by  the  CEP  will  be  implemented  in  the  field,  and 
that  the  characteristics  of  the  various  containment  features  as  built 
are  as  they  were  described  to  the  Panel.  The  seeps  and  the  leaks  that 
can  occur  are  really  prevented  by  the  people  in  the  field  who  install 
the  cable  gas  blocks,  the  cable  fanouts,  the  stemming  and  plugs,  and 
so  on.  The  Panel  relies  on  the  integrity  and  competence  of  those 
people  to  do  the  job  right,  and  to  describe  promptly  and  accurately 
any  deviations  which  may  occur. 

In  any  organization  or  Panel  that  has  operated  for  over  twenty 
years,  how  it  operates  and  how  it  might  operate  in  a  different  manner 
is  a  question  seriously  to  be  considered.  A  number  of  people,  CEP 
members,  presenters,  observers  were  asked  their  opinion  of  the 
Panel,  and  how  it  operates. 

Billy  Hudson,  LLNL,  alternate  Panel  member: 

Hudson:  I  think  that  by  its  very  existence  the  Panel  has  a  strong 
effect  on  the  way  testing  is  carried  out.  Knowing  that  you  have  to 
satisfy  a  Panel  of  relatively  bright  people  who  can  ask  penetrating 
questions  causes  you  to  look  very  carefully  at  your  designs.  It 
stimulates  attention  to  detail. 

Carothers:  At  a  CEP  presentation  a  person  is  in  a  public  forum, 
where  the  Panel  members  are  going  to  ask  questions.  Most  people 
have  a  certain  amount  of  pride  in  a  situation  like  that.  Not  that 
they're  proud  of  being  there,  but  they  don't  want  to  appear  stupid 
in  front  of  everybody. 

Hudson:  That's  right.  That's  part  of  it.  Another  part  of  it  is 
they  don't  want  to  be  caught  doing  something  that  appears  to  be 
stupid  after  the  fact,  if  indeed  there  is  a  failure.  So,  the  CEP  is  in 
many  ways  a  public  hearing  before  the  fact,  only  to  be  brought  to 
light  should  there  be  a  problem.  In  that  sense  1  think  it  has  been  a 
very  valuable  body. 

Carothers:  What  changes  would  you  make  in  it? 


576 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Hudson:  It  works.  Why  change  it?  You  know  it  could  be  done 
cheaper,  and  you  know  it  could  be  done  faster,  but  you  don't  know 
it  could  be  done  better.  If  you  said,  "Well,  gee.  That's  not  a  good 
enough  answer.  We  really  should  try  to  do  things  as  efficiently  as 
we  can,  without  sacrifice  of  quality,"  then  I  would  say  that  we  could 
probably  make  some  changes  in  the  CEP.  I'm  biased  though.  It's 
my  opinion  that  phenomenology  is  the  important  thing  to  consider 
in  understanding  containment,  or  affecting  containment.  Disci¬ 
plines  like  geology,  for  example,  are  only  supplying  data  for  the 
phenomenologist  to  think  about.  In  that  context  then,  the  role  of 
a  geologist,  or  a  hydrologist,  should  be  to  say,  "Yes,  I  think  you  have 
the  right  descriptive  information,"  or  "No,  I  don't  think  you  have 
the  right  descriptive  information."  They  shouldn't  have  an  opinion 
about  the  containment  of  the  event.  I  would  say  that  in  some  ways 
you  might  have  a  more  effective  Panel  if  it  were  comprised  basically 
of  phenomenologists,  and  the  geologists  and  hydrologists  were  cast 
in  the  same  role  as  the  drilling  and  cementing  people.  They  would 
say,  "Yes,  we  agree.  You've  got  the  right  description,"  or,  "No,  we 
think  there's  a  problem,"  but  not  make  a  statement  per  se,  or 
categorize. 

Evan  Jenkins,  geologist,  USGS,  alternate  Panel  member: 

Carothers:  How  do  you  feel  about  how  the  CEP  operates, 
Evan?  What  differences  would  you  like  to  see? 

Jenkins:  I  think  the  trend  towards  certain  data,  and  the 
presentation  of  only  those  data  is  a  mistake.  In  other  words,  not 
discussing  ail  the  data.  I  think  that  our  purpose  in  existing  as  a  Panel 
is  to  review  all  aspects,  no  matter  how  benign  they  might  be.  And 
I  think  it  would  certainly  be  beneficial,  in  a  legal  sense,  should  we 
ever  have  a  problem,  to  have  reviewed  all  of  the  data  that  are 
available,  all  that  were  collected. 

Much  of  the  data  that  has  been  collected  is  included  as  backup 
data  that  the  Labs  have  at  every  meeting,  but  don't  show.  For 
example,  the  commonly  accepted  practice  is  to  show  the  generally 
east-west  cross  sections,  but  not  the  north-south  cross  sections.  For 
some  events  they  don't  even  have  a  north-south  cross  section.  They 
should  have  it  and  show  it.  Those  cross  sections  are  usually  just 


About  the  Containment  Evaluation  Panel 


577 


horizontal  lines,  but  it's  comforting  to  know  that  all  those  lines  are 
horizontal.  I  think  that  trend  of  not  showing  data  could  get  us  into 
trouble. 

As  a  point  of  deviation  from  what  I  said,  I  think  that  the  Panel 
is  good  enough  to  recognize  points  in  the  document  that  should  be 
brought  up.  I  hope  that  we  on  the  geologic  side  are  bright  enough 
to  pick  up  things  that  should  be  brought  up.  1  sometimes  feel 
uncomfortable  because  I  certainly  don't  have  expertise  in  the 
physics,  or  the  chemistry,  or  the  engineering  parts  of  the  presenta¬ 
tions. 

Carothers:  Those  people  don't  have  the  expertise  in  geology 
that  you  have.  That's  why  there  is  a  Panel. 

Jenkins:  Well,  yes.  1  have  to  rely  on  those  other  people  for 
these  other  points.  The  geology,  I  think  we  can  handle  all  right,  but 
I  rather  hate  to  sign  my  name  to  anything  where  I  haven't  seen 
everything. 

Tom  Scolman,  LANL,  former  Los  Alamos  Test  Director: 

Scolman:  Let  me  say  something  that  I  think  ought  to  be  done. 
A  great  deal  of  what  we  have  done  and  do  with  the  CEP,  I  believe, 
is  to  lay  down  a  record  that  could  be  examined  by  whomever.  Come 
back  later,  and  that  record  offers  rational  reasons  for  doing  what 
we've  done.  It  is  a  record  that  says,  "Yes,  indeed,  we  did  look  at 
the  proper  things.  We  considered  the  proper  things,  and  the  fact 
that  this  thing  vented  and  killed  eight  thousand  sheep  in  Utah  can't 
really  be  blamed  on  our  particular  community."  Frankly,  if  I  were 
NVO,  or  if  I  were  even  Watkins  (Secretary  of  Energy),  I  might  be 
inclined  to  have  somebody  who  could  come  in  with  a  more  or  less 
clean  slate,  but  some  scientific  appreciation  of  what  we  are  trying 
to  do,  and  look  and  see  if  we  really  are  doing  the  right  things.  Are 
they  defensible?  Should  we  be  doing  things  the  way  we  are,  even 
though  some  of  them  were  developed  for  other  situations? 

Carothers:  Well,  there  are  a  couple  of  responses  that  I'd  like 
to  make.  One,  to  take  the  example  of  using,  as  stemming,  the  coarse 
and  fines  layers  that  were  developed  for  cased  holes,  in  uncased 
holes.  The  defense  is  that  they  have  worked  just  fine,  because  LANL 
has  never,  on  any  shot  since  Baneberry,  had  seepage  on  one  of  their 
events.  So,  whether  you  can  justify  that  stemming  design  or  not,  the 
fact  is  that  it  has  worked  successfully  many,  many  of  times. 


578  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Scolman:  And  that's  the  answer  I  get  every  time  I  bring  it  up. 

Carothers:  The  other  part  of  my  response  is  that  one  of  the 
reasons  I  think  the  CEP  stays  the  way  it  is,  and  does  its  business  way 
it  does  is  that,  like  the  coarse  and  fines  layers,  it  has  demonstrably 
solved  a  problem  hundreds  of  times.  Another  reason  it  stays  the 
way  it  is,  is  because  today  it  is  addressing  a  political  problem  as  well 
as  a  technical  problem. 

Scolman:  That's  the  point  I  was  making.  And  I  wonder  if  is  it 
addressing  it  properly. 

Carothers:  Well,  from  the  point  of  view  NVO,  DASMA,  DOE 
it  is.  On  several  occasions  I  have  gone  back  to  Washington  for  one 
reason  or  another;  sometimes  because  there  was  a  worry  about  the 
containment  of  a  particular  shot,  and  1  am  the  Chairman  of  the  CEP. 
I  go  there  and  say,  "I'd  like  to  tell  you  about  containment."  And 
these  are  very  capable,  concerned  people  who  are  probably  think¬ 
ing,  "If  this  shot  blows  out  of  the  ground,  there's  my  career  on  the 
line."  We  go  through  it,  and  hopefully  they're  reassured.  Then  I 
say,  "You  know,  we've  been  in  business  a  long  time.  The  Charter 
for  this  Panel  basically  comes  from  you,  and  it  says  the  following  '. 

.  .  '.  Maybe  that's  appropriate,  maybe  it's  not,  in  today's  world. 
If  you  want  to  change  it,  certainly  that  is  your  prerogative,  and  we'll 
do  it  the  way  you  want  to  do  it."  The  answer  always  is,  "I  don't  want 
to  change  a  thing." 

So  the  Panel  stays,  and  it  produces  this  public  record  that 
you're  talking  about  -  -  we  have  looked  at  these  various  things,  we 
have  made  no  radical  departures,  our  record  has  been  very  good, 
and  we  stay  close  to  our  previous  experience. 

Suppose  you,  Tom,  decided  there  was  a  cheaper,  better,  but 
very  different  kind  of  stemming,  so  you  changed  to  that  stemming 
plan.  Suppose  some  leak  happened  that  had  nothing  at  all  to  do  with 
that,  but  it  happened.  You  wouldn't  be  able  to  justify  the  change 
economically,  calculationally,  theoretically,  or  however.  Some¬ 
body  would  say,  "Well,  Tom,  you  had  two  hundred  shots  where 
they  didn't  leak,  and  then  you  changed  your  stemming." 

Scolman:  Exactly.  No,  I  agree.  It's  hard  to  argue  with  success. 


About  the  Containment  Evaluation  Panel 


579 


Carothers:  And  that's  what  the  people  in  Washington  do  not 
want  to  do.  Nor  does  the  Manager  of  NVO.  I  have  gone  in  and 
offered  my  resignation  to  every  new  Manager.  "No,  that's  fine.  We 
like  it  the  way  it  is.  I  don't  want  to  change  anything."  Actually,  I 
don't  think  they  should. 

Scolman:  Well,  I  think  the  CEP  is  certainly  necessary.  I  think 
it's  doing  good  service,  and  I  frankly  think,  for  example,  that  the 
chances  of  us  having  a  Pike-type  event,  with  the  CEP,  are  zero,  other 
than  having  some  designer  blow  it  and  get  a  yield  that  is  perhaps  a 
factor  of  two  or  three  over  design.  We  might  have  trouble 
containing  that.  On  the  other  hand,  I  know  enough  about  the  design 
business  to  think  that  is  pretty  damn  unlikely  these  days,  so  I  don't 
particularly  worry  about  that  one. 

For  a  long  time  I  was  of  the  opinion  that  probably  you  could 
come  in  and  present  Baneberry  over  again  and  get  it  okayed.  I  think 
that's  extremely  unlikely  the  way  things  work  these  days.  Baneberry 
had  enough  things  against  it  that  you  probably  couldn't  do  it. 

Carothers:  I  don't  think  there's  any  chance  you  could  get 
Baneberry  approved.  The  drilling  history  alone  would  get  it  turned 
down. 

There  are  really  two  parts  to  containment.  You  don't  want  a 
venting,  and  maybe  the  Panel  has  helped  there.  The  rest  of 
containment  is  really  the  guys  in  the  field,  taking  care  of  the  seeps 
and  the  leaks.  Those  are  really  prevented  by  the  guys  in  the  field 
doing  their  job  right.  And,  the  Panel  doesn't  really  know  much 
about  that.  The  presenter  says,  "Well,  these  cables  are  gas 
blocked."  We  say,  "Oh,  that's  good,"  because  cables  can  leak.  But 
the  Panel  relies  on  the  integrity  and  competence  of  the  people  in  the 
field.  So,  maybe  the  best  thing,  or  the  only  thing,  that  the  Panel 
really  does  is  to  try  to  prevent  a  Baneberry  or  a  Pike. 

Scolman:  Well,  it's  interesting,  because  at  least  once  a  year  my 
containment  people  would  come  back  from  the  CEP  just  infuriated, 
because  they  felt  they  had  been  badly  mistreated.  That  we,  Los 
Alamos,  get  treated  much  differently  than  Livermore  does. 

Carothers:  I  don't  happen  to  believe  that. 


580  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Scolman:  Oh,  I  know  that.  I  take  it  with  a  grain  of  salt.  I 
suspect  the  same  thing  happens  in  Livermore.  In  fact,  Bob  Kuckuck 
has  asked  me,  "How  come,  why  do  your  containment  people  pick 
on  my  containment  people?" 

Wendell  Weart,  geophysicist,  Sandia,  former  Panel  member 

Carothers:  What  did  you  think  of  the  CEP  while  you  were  on 
it?  Do  you  think  it  provided  a  useful  function,  or  was  it  just  a  bunch 
of  hoops  that  the  people  had  to  jump  through? 

Weart:  I  think  that  in  the  early  days,  clearly,  it  did  serve  a 
useful  function,  because  it  tended  to  formalize  and  focus  people's 
thinking  and  investigations  on  areas  which  experience  had  shown 
could  be  critical.  There's  probably  a  lot  that  went  on  that  wasn't 
necessary,  but  it  was  one  of  those  things  that  you  never  know  until 
you  examine  it.  There  has  to  be  some  formal  process  for  forcing  that 
examination  to  occur.  It's  a  containment  quality  assurance  pro¬ 
gram,  sort  of.  And  I  think  that  while  some  of  the  investigations  and 
things  would  have  proceeded  without  it,  this  was  a  way  of  making 
sure  that  they  did,  and  did  in  a  formalized  sense.  Everyone  knew 
what  was  expected,  and  what  kind  of  information  had  to  be 
provided.  It  was  more  structured  than  just  progress  by  normal  trial 
and  error. 

I  know  there  were  some  instances  where  one  of  the  Laborato¬ 
ries  had  to  make  significant  changes  -  -  sometimes  in  locations, 
sometimes  in  designs  -  -  before  proceeding.  And  that  is  something 
that  clearly  would  not  have  been  done  for  that  particular  event 
without  the  CEP. 

Bob  Brownlee,  LANL,  Panel  member 

Carothers:  What  are  your  thoughts  about  the  CEP,  Bob? 

Brownlee:  That  brings  up  a  point  which  I  think  is  fair  to  talk 
about.  I  worry  a  little  about  the  CEP  when  Jim  Carothers,  and  Gary 
Higgins,  and  I  are  no  longer  there.  I've  learned  not  to  trust  some 
of  those  other  guys,  because  they  have  not  only  no  memory  of  the 
past,  which  is  to  be  expected,  but  they  really  do  not  have  the  lessons 


About  the  Containment  Evaluation  Panel 


581 


of  that  history  either.  And  therefore,  they're  capable  of  just  going 
way  off  on  crazy  things,  and  there  needs  to  be  some  old  hands  to 
balance  things  there. 

We  used  to  not  have  any  turnover  on  the  Panel,  but  we've  had 
a  lot  of  turnover  in  recent  times.  There  are  some  people  that  you 
are  just  not  going  to  educate,  but  there  are  a  good  many  others  that 
don't  take  the  time  to  get  educated.  And  in  a  while  there's  not  going 
to  be  anybody  to  educate  them.  When  I  say  that  there  can  be  human 
error,  that  we're  apt  to  do  something  really  dumb,  one  of  the  places 
where  that  can  emerge  is  at  the  CEP. 

I've  done  a  thought  experiment.  Do  I  think  that  now,  right  now 
today,  I  could,  on  my  own  endeavor  -  -  although  I'd  like  to  consult 
Gary  Higgins  about  it  -  -  design  a  shot  in  such  a  way  that  the 
probability  of  failure  was  enormously  increased,  but  I  could  still  get 
it  past  the  CEP  without  them  catching  it?  Could  I  get  all  A's  on  it? 
There  was  a  time  when  I  would  have  thought,  "No,  I  couldn't  have." 
And  now  I  don't  think  I  could  either  because  of  Jim,  and  Gary,  and 
me,  and  Carl  Keller.  But  if  I  did  just  the  right  things,  and  conspired 
with  the  Chairman,  and  with  Gary,  I  think  I  could  put  through 
something  that  would  have  a  very  much  higher  probability  of  failing 
than  normal,  and  get  straight  A's  on  it.  I'll  bet  you  that  in  five  years 
the  ease  with  which  I  could  do  my  thought  experiment  will  be  greatly 
increased.  And  that  worries  me.  Part  of  it  is  because  the  people 
only  go  back  to  '63,  and  as  the  years  go  by  they  don't  even  do  that. 


Joe  Hearst,  LLNL,  observer. 

Carothers:  You've  seen  the  CEP  since  the  first  days,  when  it 
was  formed.  Do  you  think  it  does  anything  useful?  Is  it  a  function 
that  once  was  useful,  and  now  isn't?  What  are  your  comments  about 
the  CEP  as  a  body,  and  about  what  it  does. 

Hearst:  I  think,  on  balance,  it's  a  useful  thing  to  keep  the 
Laboratories  honest.  Sometimes  the  Panel  does  things  on  the  basis 
of  gut  feeling,  but  I  think  there  has  to  be  some  sort  of  reviewing  body 
to  uphold  standards  of  some  sort.  I'm  not  convinced  that  the  CEP 
does  that  as  well  as  it  might.  1  think  a  great  deal  of  effort  is  wasted 
in  getting  presentations  just  ever  so,  and  in  ail  the  nitpicking  -  -  all 
the  pre-meeting  meetings,  and  ail  the  worry  about  two  decimal 


582  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

places  when  you  can  only  measure  something  to  zero  decimal 
places.  I  think  something  like  the  Panel  is  desirable,  but  I'm  not  sure 
that  a  lot  of  what  the  Panel  does  is  worth  the  effort  needed  to  make 
the  presentation  acceptable. 

You  might  find  it  interesting  to  go  to  a  pre-CEP  meeting,  and 
listen  to  the  discussions  of,  "You  don't  want  to  say  this  because  it 
might  raise  a  question,"  or,  "You  don't  want  to  say  that,  because 
it  might  inspire  someone  to  ask  questions,"  or,  "You  don't  want  to 
present  this  information.  Keep  it  as  a  backup,  because  it  will  just 
lead  to  a  long  discussion." 

Carothers:  No,  I  have  not  been  to  such  a  meeting.  The  Panel 
operates  on  a  presumption  that  I  think  is  most  clearly  demonstrated 
in  the  question  of  yield.  The  Panel  takes  the  given  numbers  at  face 
value.  The  belief  is  that  the  Laboratory  is  really  telling  them  the 
truth  about  what  the  design  and  maximum  credible  yields  are.  The 
fundamental  presumption  upon  which  the  Panel  operates  is  that  the 
Laboratories  will  be  honest.  That  shades  off  into  an  area  with  no 
clear  boundary.  If  everything  the  Laboratory  presents  is  the  truth 
as  they  know  it,  but  they  don't  present  everything  they  know,  is  that 
being  honest? 

Hearst:  There  is  the  feeling  in  these  meetings  that  yes,  you 
should  present  what  you  know,  but  not  necessarily  all  that  you 
know.  And  you  should  be  very  careful  about  how  you  work  things 
so  you  won't  get  somebody  to  follow  something  up  and  ask 
questions. 

It's  like  Brownlee  saying,  "Show  me  the  viewgraphs  you 
haven't  shown  me.  You  always  make  those  backup  viewgraphs. 
What  are  they  for?"  Those  are  things  they  know  that  they  aren't 
going  to  tell  the  Panel,  unless  they  are  specifically  asked.  "Gee,  this 
may  make  somebody  think  about  differential  compaction,  so  maybe 
we  shouldn't  say  that  sentence.  Maybe  we  should  say  something 
different." 


John  Rambo,  LLNL,  presenter,  observer 

Carothers:  When  did  you  first  start  interacting  with  the  CEP? 

Rambo:  I  think  I  went  to  my  first  CEP  within  a  year  after 
Baneberry. 


About  the  Containment  Evaluation  Panel 


583 


Carothers:  What's  your  view  of  the  CEP?  Does  it  serve  a  useful 
function?  Was  it  always,  or  has  it  turned  into,  a  political  bureau¬ 
cratic  creature,  which  just  serves  to  validate  things  in  a  rubber- 
stamp  way? 

Rambo:  I  think  it  has  changed  over  the  years.  I  think  in  the 
beginning  people  were  honestly  frightened  of  what  they  didn't  know 
about  what  causes  containment.  That  led  to  many  ideas,  and  many 
discussions  about  things  that  may  not  have  pertained  to  containment. 
Now  it's  as  though  those  things  have  played  themselves  out  over  the 
years. 

Years  ago  somebody  who  had  a  personal  idea  about  what 
containment  was  all  about  might  have  said,  "I  think  this  one  is  a  B, 
or  even  worse,  because  I've  got  my  private  ideas  on  containment." 
When  those  shots  contained,  and  we  went  on  and  on,  fewer  and 
fewer  ideas  were  able  to  live  through  this  whole  mish-mash,  because 
the  history  said,  "Look,  we're  containing,  we're  containing." 

And  so,  I  think  this  has  kind  of  all  evolved  down  to  the  place 
where  people  have  played  out  their  ideas.  Things  seem  to  be  going 
pretty  well,  and  we've  fired  in  a  number  of  different  kinds  of 
geology,  and  we  can't  really  sort  out  any  more  what's  good  and 
what's  bad.  But  the  thing  that  scares  me  is  that  every  once  in  awhile 
I  see  something  in  a  calculation  that  scares  the  hell  out  of  me.  But 
then  you  go  back  to  the  usual  things  like  material  properties  and 
things  of  that  sort,  and  they  fall  right  in  the  middle.  And  yet,  what 
I'm  seeing  in  the  calculations  can  be  pretty  scary  at  times.  So,  what 
do  I  do?  I  go  to  the  CEP,  in  the  current  frame  of  things,  and  things 
seem  like  they're  just  going  through  like  a  train  running  past  the 
station.  It's  the  same  old  click,  "Look  at  this,"  click,  "Look  at  that," 
and  the  shot  passes  without  any  problems. 

Byron  Ristvet,  DNA,  Panel  member: 

Carothers:  Is  the  CEP  of  any  value  to  the  DNA? 

Ristvet:  Yes.  Oh  yes.  Let  me  tell  you  how  the  CEP  helps  me, 
at  least.  I've  always  approached  the  CEP  as  if  I  were  taking  my 
qualifying  orals  again  for  my  doctorate.  It  is  a  similar  type 
experience,  especially  in  the  days  of  old,  when  the  CEP  was  little 
more  rigorous,  perhaps,  in  its  questioning.  But  then  again,  I've 
thought  that  maybe  it  isn't  that  they're  less  rigorous  than  they  were. 


584 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


it's  just  we're  a  lot  better  prepared,  and  we  have  convinced 
ourselves,  based  on  our  CEP  experience,  of  what  lurks  in  the  minds 
of  the  people  sitting  at  that  table.  Some  people  talk  about,  "Well, 
do  you  think  we  can  sell  that  to  the  CEP?"  and  I  don't  approach  it 
that  way.  I  have  never  thought  that  way. 

I  approach  it  in  the  manner  that  the  CEP  is  going  to  base  their 
judgment  primarily  on  experience,  and  if  we  don't  have  direct 
experience  we  have  to  indirectly  derive  experience  on  things.  Take 
the  the  plugs,  for  example,  the  drift  protection  plugs.  I  started, 
when  I  worked  for  Carl  Keller,  actually  going  out  and  field  checking 
these  things  myself,  to  make  sure  that  they  were  pretty  much  like 
we  say  the  were  to  the  CEP. 

Now,  I  know  nobody  from  the  CEP,  though  they  could  if  they 
wanted  to,  could  go  out  and  field  check  what  we  have  built.  It  just 
helps  me  be  prepared.  I  put  myself  in  the  position  that  I'm  a  CEP 
Panel  member  when  I'm  putting  the  prospectus  together,  in  that  we 
want  to  get  the  Panel  to  accept  the  shot,  but  we  also  want  to  assure 
ourselves.  That's  why  in  our  vessel  concept  we  proof-test  our 
vessels.  And  it  turns  out  that  our  proof-tests  at  three  to  five  psi 
above  ambient  in  the  tunnels  is  really  a  more  severe  test  on  the  plugs 
than  if  we  did  it  at  real  pressures  of  perhaps  one  or  two  or  three 
hundred  psi. 

That  is  because  basically  we  use  the  Bob  Kennedy  type 
keyways,  and  that  is  where  the  plugs  seat  as  you  press  against  them, 
and  as  they  seat  they  create  a  hoop-stress  in  the  rock  surrounding 
the  plug.  With  our  pressure  grout  rings  behind  those  plugs  it's 
impossible  for  gas  to  flow  around  the  plug,  assuming  a  fairly 
impermeable  media,  which  we  have  in  the  zealotized  tuff.  We've 
done  a  lot  in  suggesting  the  designs,  but  again,  it  is  these  engineering 
practices,  and  the  attention  to  detail  that  is  so  important. 

And  that's  what's  scary  in  the  future,  as  we  lose  these  people 
who  know  what  to  look  for  through  experience,  and  who  know  the 
tricks  of  the  trade. 

Irv  Williams,  DASMA  staff,  DOE  Washington 

Williams:  One  of  the  things  the  CEP  has  done  is  try  to  make 
sure  that  the  Laboratory  people  have  done  their  homework.  And 
if  they  haven't,  you  know,  it's  embarrassing  to  be  asked  certain 
questions.  I  think  the  CEP  is  an  absolute  must,  because  with  a 


About  the  Containment  Evaluation  Panel 


585 


venting,  I  think  we  would  go  out  of  business  permanently.  Another 
Baneberry,  and  I  thinkwe  would  beshutoutofNevada.  And  I  don't 
know  any  place  we  could  ever  go  back  and  test,  without  a  furor,  and 
that  includes  Amchitka.  Therefore  I  think  it  behooves  us  to 
maintain  the  integrity  and  the  questioning  ability  of  the  CEP  to  make 
sure  the  homework  is  done  by  the  Laboratories,  and  that  we  feel 
relatively  confident  that  we're  not  going  to  have  a  leak.  Without 
that  I  think  we  jeopardize  the  future  of  any  testing.  And  potentially 
the  end  of  the  weapons  program. 

You  do  need  to  test,  I'm  convinced  of  that.  I've  been  through 
too  many  experiments,  and  too  many  times  we've  had  people  who 
said,  "It's  a  piece  of  cake."  And  then  we  get  a  surprise.  Some  are 
little,  and  some  are  big.  We  can  generally  stand  the  little  ones.  The 
big  ones  make  you  go  back  and  do  your  homework.  And  you  can't 
do  it  on  a  computer.  You  can't  do  it  on  a  shot  table  at  Site  300, 
or  on  a  Fermex  machine.  The  only  way  you  can  do  that  experiment 
is  underground. 

We  have  to  have  the  confidence  the  CEP  brings  to  the  Directors 
(DASMA)  here,  because  they  do  read  the  reports,  and  they  do  ask 
questions.  Occasionally  I  have  to  come  back  and  ask  the  Panel, 
"What  did  you  mean?"  The  words  are  read,  and  it's  amazing  how 
well  they  are  read  by  the  Directors.  The  Directors,  once  they  take 
the  job,  and  they  understand  the  responsibility  that  goes  with  it, 
want  to  make  sure  that  things  are  complete,  and  we  try  always  to 
make  sure  it  is  a  complete  package. 

I've  watched  the  Panel  a  long,  long  time,  and  I've  attended 
meetings  where  there  were  some  .  .  .  .  inspiring  discussions,  let's 
say.  I  think  you  need  to  keep  inquiring  minds  in  there,  and  continue 
to  realize  that  strange  things  do  happen  on  shots.  The  people  on  the 
Panel  need  to  realize  that.  That's  the  big  thing,  I  think.  They've  got 
to  realize  that  we  get  surprises  out  there.  And  I  feel  that  maintaining 
our  record  is  crucial. 

Carothers:  The  CEP  Charter  contains  an  unusual  sentence, 
which  says  that  in  considering  the  containment  design  the  Panel  shall 
give  no  weight,  pay  no  attention,  to  money,  schedule,  or  data 
acquisition.  That's  an  unusual  charge  that  the  Panel  has. 


586 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Williams:  Yes,  and  it  was  intended  at  the  time  to  say,  "We 
know  people  will  cut  corners.  We  want  to  make  this  so  corners 
aren't  cut  and  there  aren't  incidents  and  accidents  as  a  result  of 
that."  It  was  meant  to  give  a  strong  hand  to  the  Panel.  That's  also 
why  they  insisted  on  the  independence  of  the  Panel  members. 

I  have  felt  comfortable  with  the  way  the  Panel  has  operated, 
and  the  fact  that  it  remains  inquisitive.  I  would  encourage  them  to 
keep  the  Laboratory  people  on  their  toes  in  doing  their  work, 
because  we  all  have  a  tendency  to  think  we're  old  hands,  and  dismiss 
things.  Try  to  make  sure  that  the  young  bloods  coming  up  are 
inquisitive,  and  very  serious  about  their  endeavors,  so  they  really 
fully  categorize  the  experiments.  1  think  the  life  of  the  program, 
from  the  technical  side,  rests  on  our  ability  to  assure  containment. 

Carothers:  I  think  the  people  on  the  Panel,  and  in  the 
Laboratories  believe  that  too.  But  an  attitude  can  develop  in  the 
Laboratories  that  the  object  of  the  CEP  meeting  is  "to  get  this  thing 
through."  Rather  than,  "Let's  go  talk  about  it  together,  and  see  if 
there's  something  we  missed."  That  worries  me. 

Williams:  That  worries  me  too.  I  think  there  should  automati¬ 
cally  be  full  disclosure  to  the  Panel,  because,  what  you  might 
consider  to  be  inconsequential,  someone  else  can  consider  to  be 
very  serious.  I  feel  that  to  be  responsible  they  should  have  full 
disclosure,  and  do  it  in  descriptive  terms,  so  you  can  communicate 
with  people  back  here,  so  we  ail  understand  it. 


587 


23 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 

There  are  many  uncertainties  and  ambiguities  that  surround  the 
subject  of  containment.  Persons  working  in  the  field  are  certainly 
aware  of  them,  particularly  in  the  areas  of  their  own  expertise.  Still, 
they  have  been  called  on  many  times  to  pass  judgment  on  things 
suc.h  as  the  acceptability  of  a  proposed  event  location,  or  the 
possible  effect  on  containment  of  a  particular  experimental  con¬ 
figuration.  Calculations  can  sometimes  offer  guidance.  Past  expe¬ 
rience  is  useful,  but  not  infallable.  Ultimately  it  is  the  opinions  and 
beliefs  of  the  people  involved  that  weigh  heavily  in  the  decisions 
that  are  made. 

What  follows  is  a  collection  of  some  of  those  opinions  and 
thoughts  held  by  various  of  the  people  who  have  have  been  quoted 
in  the  previous  chapters. 


Cliff  Olsen 

Olsen:  I  think  one  of  the  problems  in  containment  is  something 
I  had  to  learn,  and  1  think  I  learned  it  slowly.  In  school,  and  I  think 
it's  almost  reinforced  in  graduate  school,  you  focus  closely  on 
something.  You  have  to  look  at  something  in  great  detail,  and  you 
tend  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  there's  something  else  close  by. 
You  look  at  the  mechanism  of  a  particular  reaction,  and  you  isolate 
it,  and  you  figure  that  all  out. 

In  the  containment  world  the  scenario  is  always  changing;  the 
environment,  and  the  mechanism  concerned,  is  always  changing. 
For  example,  if  you  design  a  collimator  having  in  mind  only  what  it 
does  to  the  x-ray  flux,  and  you  forget  that  something  else  is  going 
to  happen  after  the  x-rays  are  long  gone,  you  can  get  in  real  trouble. 
So,  you  have  to  constantly  keep  thinking  about  what  is  going  to 
happen  next.  Where  do  we  go  from  here?  You  have  to  keep  looking 
at  different  mechanisms  all  the  time,  and  how  they  keep  interacting. 
You  can't  just  say,  "Okay,  that  thing  did  it's  job.  Now  I  can  forget 
it."  For  instance,  on  the  early  shots  there  were  people  who  would 
design  an  x-ray  experiment,  and  they  would  install  it,  and  forget  all 


588  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

about  it.  Eventually  we  learned  that  you  can't  do  that.  You  have 
to  look  at  all  the  pieces,  and  you  have  to  look  at  how  they  behave 
promptly,  and  intermediately,  and  later  on,  and  maybe  even  after 
collapse,  when  the  guy  who  designed  it  couldn't  care  less  what  it's 
doing. 

I  think  that  was  one  of  the  hardest  lessons.  We  had  to  learn  to 
look  through  the  entire  time  span  of  the  test,  which  meant  from  the 
time  of  lighting  the  HE  on  the  primary  to  possibly  way  after  it 
collapsed,  and  we  had  to  appreciate  how  everything  was  going  to 
behave  through  that  whole  time  period,  which  is  ten  decades  or 
more,  because  a  lot  of  it  was  uncontrollable.  And  we  just  didn't  do 
that  in  the  beginning.  We  did  things  that  worked  fine  for  part  of  that 
time  span,  but  were  dumb  for  a  different  part. 

It  was  on  Umber  where  a  particular  thing  that  became  obvious 
was  that  you  had  to  concern  yourself  with  things  that  happen  as  late 
as  collapse,  and  that  you  better  be  careful  about  how  you  engineer 
stuff  to  survive  collapse.  Los  Alamos  had  a  line-of-sight  pipe  with 
a  bunch  of  valves  going  off  to  various  things  at  the  surface,  and  when 
collapse  occurred  a  couple  of  those  valves  sheared  off.  So,  it  just 
started  leaking,  and  there  was  nothing  they  could  do  about  it.  And 
it  leaked  quite  a  bit. 


Bob  Bass 

Carothers:  Bob,  what  do  you  think  is  the  fundamental  mecha¬ 
nism  that  leads  to  containment? 

Bass:  Mass. 

Carothers:  Billy  Hudson,  years  ago  said  that  he  believed  a  foot 
of  overburden  was  more  effective  for  containment  than  a  foot  of 
printouts. 

Bass:  I  think  that's  probably  true.  The  question  of  the  right 
overburden  has  often  worried  me  in  Rainier  Mesa.  We're  always 
firing  in  the  same  part  of  Rainier  Mesa,  but  occasionally  there's  been 
a  reason  why  we  wanted  to  pull  one  out  closer  to  the  portal.  Then 
somebody  says,  "We've  got  the  same  amount  of  overburden,  so  it's 
okay."  But  I  don't  know  that  it's  as  good  overburden  when  you  get 
out  towards  the  portal.  It's  more  of  a  chopped  up  mess  there.  It's 
got  more  stringers  through  it,  it's  got  more  damage  from  erosion. 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


589 


I  don't  know  that  I  would  trust  the  same  amount  of  overburden 
there  as  I  would  way  back  in  that  mountain.  I  think  you  need  a 
competent,  solid  mass  to  contain  a  shot. 


Paul  Orkild 

Orkild:  I  look  at  the  structure  first,  then  the  rock  type,  and 
then  the  water.  And  then  at  the  stemming.  Sometimes  stemming, 
to  me,  is  the  all  important  factor  if  the  geologic  media  is  benign. 
Stemming  is  very  important. 

One  of  the  things  that  I  rely  heavily  on  is  past  experience.  I 
think  predictions  about  containment  depends  largely  on  judgment 
developed  from  past  experience.  I  believe  that's  very,  very  true.  If 
we  didn't  have  the  past  experience  of  the  people  who  are  on  the 
Panel,  I  think  that  it  would  be  much  more  difficult.  I  think  that 
what's  going  to  happen,  when  you  get  a  new,  younger  generation, 
is  that  they'll  struggle. 

Carothers:  No,  they'll  have  this  book. 

Orkild:  Oh,  that's  right. 

Carothers:  "What  did  Paul  Orkild  say  about  this  situation?" 

Orkild:  Oh  God! 


Russ  Duff 

Duff:  I  guess  as  far  as  containment  is  concerned,  I  would 
summarize  my  understanding  of  it  by  saying,  "I  don't."  I  have  been 
working  in  aspects  of  containment-related  science  since  the  early 
sixties,  and  I've  been  running  the  DNA  late-time  containment 
contract  at  S-Cubed  for  the  better  part  of  twenty  years.  In  that 
period  of  time  I've  become  very  aware  of  the  extreme  complexity 
of  the  issues  of  containment.  Containment  is  complex  because  the 
phenomenology  involved  in  the  explosion  includes  not  only  shock 
physics,  but  coupled  to  it  are  many  other  processes  -  -  thermal 
conduction,  chemical  reactions,  diffusion,  condensation,  and  so  on 
-  -  which  occur  simultaneously  at  extreme  conditions.  And  they 
occur  in  modified  media,  and  those  media  aren't  well  known  even 
before  they  were  modified. 


590  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Those  phenomena  are  extremely  complex,  and  our  knowledge 
base  is  so  limited,  and  our  diagnostics  are  so  incomplete  that  not 
only  do  we  not  know  very  much,  but  we're  not  learning  at  a 
significant  rate  either.  I  think  that  in  the  containment  world  we're 
dealing  with  a  situation  where  a  lot  of  people  don't  realize  how 
ignorant  they  are.  If  it  aint  broke,  don't  fix  it  is  an  attitude  which 
is  unassailable  in  many  respects,  from  an  engineering  point  of  view. 

Carothers:  Or  a  bureaucratic  point  of  view.  One  of  the  things 
I've  always  felt  hampered  the  achieving  of  a  better  understanding  of 
containment  is  the  fact  that  the  present  system  is  demonstrably 
successful  -  -  really  remarkably  successful  considering  how  little 
people  know.  And  so,  anyone  quite  reasonably  could  say,  "Why  in 
the  world  should  I  spend  any  money  on  that  stuff?  You  guys  are 
doing  great." 

Rambo:  That's  a  very  strong  argument,  and  that's  what  I  hear 
ail  the  time.  You  have  to  convince  somebody  you  need  to  know 
something,  for  a  dollar  value,  and  that's  where  the  nebulous  part  of 
this  decision  making  comes  in.  What  more  do  you  need  to  know? 
Until  you  have  a  problem,  you'll  never  know  that  you  needed  to 
know  it. 

Duff:  I  would  make  an  alternative  argument.  We  know  that 
Haymaker  is  the  only  event  that  has  leaked  in  the  60  kiloton  or  so 
range.  We  have  shot  I  don't  know  how  many  events  that  have  yields 
higher  than  that.  Even  in  the  days  before  Baneberry,  without  all  the 
things  we  do  these  days,  there  never  has  been  a  leak  from  events  in 
that  yield  range,  no  matter  what  was  done  or  not  done. 

So,  using  that  as  an  example,  I  respond  to  your  statement,  "We 
have  a  successful  program,  so  why  spend  money,"  by  arguing,  "We 
have  a  successful  program  which  is  wasting  a  lot  of  money  in  a  lot 
of  respects.  If  we  better  understood  what  was  going  on  we  might 
save  a  bundle."  It  might  well  be  that  if  we  understood  what  was 
going  on  we  could  bury  events  at,  say,  just  to  make  up  some 
numbers,  a  scaled  depth  of  burial  of  80  meters,  with  an  attendant 
savings  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  in  cables,  and  drilling, 
and  stemming,  and  time.  I  can't  prove  any  of  that,  and  that's  the 
problem,  but  nobody  can  prove  it's  wrong  either.  We  can't  really 
make  a  risk-benefit  analysis  and  show  that  if  you  put  out  this  much 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


591 


money,  you'll  save  that  much.  We  can't  do  it  because  we  don't 
know  what  the  answer  is,  or  even  what  direction  the  search  should 
take. 

And  we  deal  with  a  management  system,  a  real  world  environ¬ 
ment,  where  containment  is  often  a  necessary  evil.  You,  ]im,  have 
called  it  a  reluctant  science,  because  it  is  a  drain  on  important 
resources;  time,  money,  and  thought.  And  therefore,  the  Labora¬ 
tories  have  been  very  conservative  in  their  designs.  They  have  done 
very  little  in  the  way  of  what  i  would  call  containment  research. 
Their  containment  programs  have  been  largely  minimalist  pro¬ 
grams.  They  do  whatever  is  required  to  get  the  job  done,  but  no 
more.  No  more.  The  science  of  containment  has  not,  to  me, 
appeared  to  be  a  matter  of  much  concern  to  the  Laboratories. 

Now,  I  understand  that,  but  as  a  scientist  who  has  lived  and 
worked  at  both  Los  Alamos  and  Livermore,  and  who  has  fond 
memories  of  those  days,  I  am  frustrated,  and  have  long  been 
frustrated,  by  the  propensity  to  rely  so  heavily  on  experience.  And 
by  the  fact  that  so  little  is  done  that  is  aimed  at  trying  to  understand 
what's  really  going  on.  There  has  been  relatively  little  research  and 
analysis  through  the  years  by  the  people  who  are  doing  most  of  the 
work,  and  progress  has  been  relatively  slow. 

DNA,  on  the  other  hand,  has  at  least  had  a  long-term, 
consistent  program  aimed  at  trying  to  understand  what  is  going  on 
in  some  areas.  Even  there,  however,  there  are  very  strong  elements 
of  conservatism,  and  very  strong  parochial  views,  and  play  pens  of 
one  sort  and  another.  The  economic,  administrative,  and  political 
constraints  which  have  influenced  the  DNA  effort  are  very  real,  and 
they  are  constricting  to  the  research  aspects. 

As  a  result,  after  spending  a  very  fair  fraction  of  my  technical 
career  as  a  containment  specialist,  I  can't  claim  to  understand 
what's  going  on  very  well.  I  think  I  have  a  broader  understanding 
of  aspects  of  the  phenomenology  than  many  of  the  people  who  work 
in  the  program,  but  that's  only  a  comparative  statement,  not  an 
absolute  statement  in  any  way. 


592  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Bill  Twenhofel 

Carothers:  Bill,  when  you  look  at  a  proposed  event,  what  do 
you  look  with  regards  to  containment.  What  do  you  think  is 
important? 

Twenhofel:  I  look  to  see  whether  there's  anything  about  this 
new  shot  that  differs  from  previous  experience,  with  emphasis  on 
geology  of  course.  Are  there  any  flags  that  come  up  that  say,  "This 
location  is  different." 

An  active  fault  nearby  that  would  move  a  lot  would  concern 
me.  And  big  acoustic  interfaces,  like  the  Paleozoics.  We  don't  have 
a  lot  of  experience  shooting  near  the  Paleozoics.  Obviously,  high 
carbonate  content  is  a  culprit.  To  summarize  what  geologic  factors 
should  be  looked  at;  faults,  acoustic  interfaces,  carbonate  content, 
clay  content,  and  anything  that  is  not  within  experience. 


Tom  Kunkle 

Kunkle:  Why  is  it  a  hundred  twenty  scaled  meters  keeps  a  shot 
in  the  ground?  We  have  had  shots  vent.  Only  a  few  times,  but  shots 
buried  at  eighty  scaled  meters  have,  on  occasion,  vented.  Even  ones 
at  larger  scaled  depths  have.  There  is  certainly  historical  precedent. 
Baneberry,  for  example,  a  shot  that  was  buried  at  what  we  consid¬ 
ered  a  conservative  scaled  depth  of  burial  was  able  to  push  gas  to  the 
surface.  So  it  is  possible  for  shots  today  to  do  that. 

That's  a  point  that  we,  in  modern  times,  tend  easily  to  forget. 
We  have  such  confidence  in  our  calculations  and  our  history  that  we 
tend  to  forget  that  it  really  is  possible  that  shots  buried  at  a  hundred 
and  ten,  or  a  hundred  and  twenty,  or  a  hundred  and  thirty  scaled 
meters,  or  absolute  depths  of  four  hundred  meters,  could  vent  to 
the  surface.  There's  some  reason  that  they  stay  in  the  ground,  and 
we  think  we  understand  that  partly,  but  we  don't  have  any  good 
corroboration.  And  so  it's  possible  for  me  to  get  worried  about 
events,  even  very  large,  very  deeply  buried  events. 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


593 


Bill  Flangas 

Flangas:  We  tend  to  think  of  one  kt  as  just  a  little  shot,  but  one 
kt  is  a  fearful  amount  of  explosion.  If  you  convert  that  to  boxes  of 
dynamite,  you  realize  what  a  great  amount  of  energy  you've  got 
there.  You  do  that  under  a  variety  of  conditions,  and  a  variety  of 
ground  conditions  —  sometimes  saturated  with  water,  sometimes 
not,  sometimes  perched  water  tables,  sometimes  a  pattern  of 
fractures  that  may  or  may  not  lead  into  the  ground  zero,  so  there 
are  a  lot  of  variables.  Sometimes  they  react  differently,  but  in  one 
lifetime  1  think  the  testing  community  has  just  done  an  extraordinar¬ 
ily  good  job  of  dealing  with  violent  explosions,  and  controlling 
them. 

Again,  when  you're  dealing  with  a  dynamic  force  this  big,  after 
you've  called  your  best  shot,  there  are  still  surprises.  And  they  will 
continue  to  be  there.  I  think  though,  between  all  of  us,  we  have 
certainly  minimized  them.  I've  seen  published  numbers  of  the  shots 
that  have  been  done,  and  it's  perfectly  obvious  we  could  not  have 
done,  in  one  generation,  our  generation,  that  many  hundreds  of 
atmospheric  events  to  achieve  the  reliability  of  the  weapons  we  have 
today.  I  can  just  not  imagine  us  having  shot  hundreds  of  atmo¬ 
spheric  shots. 


Bob  Bass 

Bass:  I'll  tell  you  where  money  ought  to  be  spent,  when  it  is, 
if  it  ever  is.  I'm  effectively  quoting  Billy  Hudson's  ideas  on  this.  I 
think  it's  important  that  containment  not  rule  the  experiments.  I 
think  there  has  been  a  tendency  in  recent  years  for  containment  to 
be  the  driving  feature.  "You  can't  do  that,  because  it  isn't  a  good 
containment  idea."  Billy  says,  "No.  Tell  us  what  you  need  to  do, 
and  we'll  figure  how  to  do  it." 

Carothers:  That's  exactly  right.  I  know  that  the  Laboratories 
don't  present  some  things  to  the  CEP.  They  say, "Weil,  we  will  just 
get  hassled  about  this,  so  we  won't  do  it."  That's  wrong,  because 
the  CEP  might  say,  "You  ought  to  calculate  this,"  or  "You  ought  to 
do  that,  and  I'd  feel  more  comfortable,  but  it  can  be  done." 


594  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

Bass:  Yep,  "This  is  the  rule,  and  this  is  what  we  follow."  1  say, 
"Experimenters,  come.  Propose  your  experiment.  There's  a  way 
to  do  it."  And  if  somebody  comes  up  with  a  reason  to  do  something, 
we  will  find  a  way  to  do  it. 


Norton  Rimer 

Rimer:  For  containment,  clearly  absolute  depth  helps.  There's 
an  example  that's  important  that  I  don't  think  has  ever  been  brought 
up  at  the  CEP.  For  example,  if  we  ever  shoot  an  event  in  granite, 
we  need  a  totally  different  depth  of  burial  criteria  to  avoid  seeps.  I 
did  a  number  of  calculations,  probably  fifteen  years  ago,  for  various 
reasons,  about  shooting  an  event  in  granite.  I  think  the  containment 
depth  I  came  up  with  was  at  least  I  50  meters  times  the  yield  to  the 
one-third. 

Carothers:  By  the  existing  criteria,  that  would  be  very  conser¬ 
vative. 

Rimer:  Well,  I  don't  think  it  would  be  very  conservative  at  all 
for  granite.  I'd  be  happy  with  1  80,  but  you  know  what  drilling  costs 
are.  It's  another  medium,  and  for  releasing  gases  it's  a  different  ball 
game. 

The  stronger  the  rock  is,  the  more  it's  likely  to  have  tensile 
failure.  That's  a  funny  thing  to  say,  but  it's  a  question  of  equilibrium 
at  the  end.  It's  the  question  of  continuity  of  radial  stress,  which  is 
a  boundary  condition.  The  amount  that  the  radial  stress  can  differ 
from  the  hoop  stress  depends  on  the  strength  of  the  medium,  so  a 
stronger  medium  can  have  hoop  stresses  much  lower  in  compression 
than  a  weak  material  like  alluvium  or  tuff.  A  hard  rhyolite  is  the 
closest  thing  to  a  granite  that  we  shoot  in  at  the  Test  Site,  but  it's 
not  near  as  strong  —  it  doesn't  have  near  as  high  a  wave  speed.  The 
hardest  rhyolite  I've  seen,  the  seismic  velocity  is  4200,  4400 
meters  a  second,  and  you  can  get  a  shear  modulus  out  of  that. 
Granite  is  5500  meters  a  second. 

I  calculated  Pile  Driver  ad  infinitum.  Tensile  failure  occurred 
from  the  surface  down  to  below  the  Pile  Driver  cavity,  in  those 
calculations.  Then  we  calculated  deeper  shots,  on  a  scaled  basis, 
and  even  then  I  got  fractures  down  to  the  cavity.  It  was  only  when 
I  got  to  higher  than  1  50  scaled  meters  depth  that  there  was  a  small 
-  -  twenty,  thirty  meters  -  -  zone  of  unfractured  rock  above  the 
cavity.  Now,  the  porosity  in  some  of  those  fractures  was  very  small; 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


595 


ten  to  the  minus  three.  On  the  other  hand,  I  didn't  assume  there 
were  joints  down  there,  so  even  1  50  meters  scaled  depth  I'm  not 
all  that  happy  with,  for  late  time  seeps. 

That's  based  on  tensile  failure  calculations  that  we  did  for 
different  yields  and  different  depths.  I  think  we  did  1  OOkt  at  1 000 
meters,  20kt  at  1 000  meters,  20kt  at  Piiedriver  depth,  which  was 
460  meters.  We  did  a  number  of  calculations.  We  didn't  do  the 
whole  parameter  space,  and  of  course,  the  models  were  not  as  good 
back  then.  We've  improved  some  of  the  things  in  our  description 
since. 


Bob  Brownlee 

Brownlee:  I  really  think  that  we  have  reduced  the  probabilities 
of  venting  so  low  that  what  we're  apt  to  get  caught  up  on  is 
something  trivial.  That's  what  I  think.  I  am  convinced  that 
nowadays  the  probability,  by  the  time  we  get  a  shot  reviewed  and 
down  hole,  of  it  venting  is  very  low  for  most  of  our  shots.  Of  course, 
it's  not  the  same  for  all  shots,  so  when  we  do  a  certain  kind  of  shot, 
the  probability  could  be  much  higher.  Now,  I  have  argued  you 
ought  to  react  differently  depending  upon  what  the  circumstances 
are.  You  can  take  the  view,  and  I  understand  it,  that  it's  good  to 
always  look  for  the  worse  case  and  plan  your  activities  accordingly. 
My  response  to  that  is,  "Yes,  but  that  communicates  the  wrong  idea 
to  people." 

My  feeling  is  that  on  the  average  shot  now,  if  it  cannot  be 
compared  to  any  previous  failure,  then  we  have  to  postulate 
something  brand  new  to  have  it  fail.  And  we  have  been  testing  long 
enough  with  a  variety  of  different  kinds  of  things  that  something 
brand  new  is  highly  improbable.  Our  luck  has  been  that  if  it  is  likely 
to  have  happened,  it  would  have  happened  to  us.  We  would  have 
given  it  the  opportunity  to  happen  already. 

Carothers:  Would  you  say,  "That's  true  as  long  as  you  confine 
yourself  to  the  Nevada  Test  Site." 

Brownlee:  Oh,  yes.  That's  implicit.  Notice  what  I  said.  "If 
you  can't  compare  it  with  any  failure  we've  had."  That  means  at  the 
Nevada  Test  Site.  If  I  go  to  a  brand  new  area,  in  a  brand  new 
medium,  I  now  have  nothing  to  compare  to.  I  have  to  assume, 
therefore,  that  I  have  to  start  over. 


596 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


When  we  talk  about  containment,  I've  always  lived  in  fear  of 
some  perfectly  simple  thing  that  everybody  knows  is  important 
doesn't  happen  to  get  done.  Once  in  a  while  I  know  that  I  annoy 
the  dickens  out  of  people  here,  because  I  ask,  finally,  "Did  you  get 
the  stemming  in  the  hole?"  What  I'm  really  asking  is,  "Have  you 
looked  at  the  things  everybody  takes  for  granted?"  And  they  hate 
that  question.  They  just  hate  it.  But  I  still  think  that  we've  got  a 
chance  one  day  of  buying  the  farm  for  the  most  indefensible, 
grossest,  error. 

Carothers:  Duane  Sewell  would  thoroughly  agree  with  you 
because,  when  he  was  at  Livermore,  he  really  was  quite  concerned 
with  safety.  An  often  used  expression  of  his  was,  "I'm  concerned 
about  ten  year-itis."  You  put  some  new  people  on  a  job,  or  project 
where  something  bad  could  really  happen.  They  didn't  know  what 
they  were  doing,  so  they  worried,  and  they  worked  hard,  and  they 
learned,  and  after  a  time  they  got  to  where  they  were,  in  fact, 
experts.  And  they  did  this  risky  business  all  the  time. 

Brownlee:  And  ten  years  later? 

Carothers:  Ten  years  later,  of  course,  "This  is  a  piece  of  cake." 
But  it's  not  a  nicer  piece  of  cake.  It's  no  less  a  hazard  than  when 
they  first  looked  at  it. 

Brownlee:  And  it  may  be  more  of  a  hazard,  because  in  the 
meantime  they've  changed  a  cable,  and  they've  changed  the  firing 
set,  and  they've  changed  something  else.  And  you've  also  probably 
changed  out  the  person  who  did  it,  and  who  remembers? 

Byron  Ristvet 

Ristvet:  Let  me  emphasize  we  have  two  definitions  of 
containment  at  DNA.  One  is  in  the  classic  CEP  sense.  At  one  time 
our  containment  experience  with  horizontal  line-of-sight  shots 
wasn't  much  better  than  the  vertical  experience  of  the  Laboratories. 
Today,  with  regards  to  the  CEP  kind  of  containment,  I  have  very 
little  concern  about  uncontrolled  leakage  to  the  atmosphere  from  a 
DNA  event.  That  is  especially  true  now  with  the  lower  yield  events. 
For  low  yields  our  tunnel  volumes  are  huge,  so  any  threats  against 
the  plugs  are  rather  small,  and  it  really  makes  that  part  pretty 
straightforward.  Especially  because  we  proof  test  everything,  and 
we  do  spend  a  lot  of  time  on  attention  to  detail. 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


597 


Carothers:  The  DNA  people  really  work  very  hard  to  protect 
the  samples.  If  they  achieve  that,  any  release  is  very  unlikely. 

Ristvet:  That's  exactly  correct.  Sample  protection  is  our  other 
definition  of  containment,  and  that  is  very  important  to  us.  We  have 
spent  a  lot  of  effort  trying  to  understand  how  to  be  as  confident  of 
that  as  we  are  about  a  release  to  the  atmosphere,  but  there  can  still 
be  surprises  there. 


Ed  Peterson 

Peterson:  Let  me  tell  you  what  I  think  our  design  philosophy 
for  the  line-of-sight  events  has  been  very  recently,  and  in  which  I 
really  believe.  I  think  that  in  a  containment  design  you  have  to  make 
the  first  closure,  the  one  that's  closest  to  the  working  point, 
sufficiently  strong  so  it  can  act  as  a  bulkhead  to  the  stemming.  You 
have  to  know  that  closure  works,  and  no  matter  what  pressures  you 
get  in  that  stemming  for  whatever  reason,  you  won't  extrude  the 
stemming  out  through  that  bulkhead.  In  the  low  yield  case  this  has 
so  far  worked  satisfactorily  with  the  FAC.  I  suspect  in  the  standard 
yield  shots  we  have  from  now  on  the  first  closure  will  be  a  real  heavy- 
duty  closure  that  can  do  that.  DNA  has  been  designing  one  like  that. 
So  that's  sort  of  number  one. 

I  think  the  second  thing  you  have  to  do  is,  once  you  understand 
within  your  error  bars  what  the  conditions  of  the  formation  are 
where  you're  working,  and  you  know  your  yield  so  you  know  where 
to  place  that  closure,  you  then  make  your  line-of-sight  pipe  so  it  fits 
the  closure  at  that  place.  In  other  words,  you  don't  move  your 
closure  just  to  accommodate  a  bigger  pipe  taper. 

I  think  those  two  things  are  basic.  Make  sure  that  first  closure 
can  act  as  a  stemming  bulkhead  so  you  can't  extrude  your  stemming 
out,  and  then  make  sure  you  position  that  closure  correctly,  and 
make  your  line-of-sight  pipe  taper  accordingly.  I  think  those  are  the 
two  major  design  features.  All  the  other  stuff  is  nice,  and  all  the 
other  stuff  you  should  probably  do,  but  those  are  the  ones  I  think 
will  save  you  if  something  goes  wrong. 


598 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Of  course,  you  have  to  go  into  things  you  consider  sort  of  QA, 
such  as  making  sure  your  tunnel  diameters  are  right,  making  sure 
that  the  grouts  are  in  per  their  design  characteristics,  and  on  and  on 
like  that.  We  aren't  to  the  point  where  we  want  to  throw  any  safety 
margin  away. 

Carothers:  To  oversimplify,  "Don't  get  too  sophisticated. 
You've  got  to  have  some  strength  close  in  to  handle  things.  If  you 
have  that,  it  will  make  up  for  a  lot  of  what  you  don't  know." 

Peterson:  I  think  that's  true.  I  think  we  do  a  lot  of,  call  them 
good  analyses  or  sophisticated  or  difficult  analyses,  and  I  think 
they've  been  very  good  in  that  they  have  given  us  a  way  of  thinking 
about  things.  In  other  words,  they  give  us  some  idea  of  how  things 
may  be  occurring,  and  what  parameters  may  be  important,  and 
which  ones  may  affect  you.  But  I  don't  think  that  at  this  point  you 
can  consider  them  predictive  type  analyses  you  can  base  a  design  on. 
I  think  that  since  you  don't  want  it  to  leak,  you'll  want  to  look  at 
the  things  that  will  serve  as  a  brute-force  type  of  containment. 

One  of  the  calculations  we  do  routinely  is  to  look  at  the 
conditions  at  both  the  overburden  plug  and  the  gas-seal  plug.  We've 
looked  at  them  compared  to  events  where  stuff  has  gotten  into  the 
tunnel,  and  we  have  not  as  yet  measured  anything  in  the  tunnel  that 
is  worse  than  our  worse  case  prediction.  Exactly  why  I  don't  know, 
but  we  haven't.  And  I  think  those  plugs  are  very  important  as  far 
as  backup  goes.  Everybody  wants  to  design  the  tunnel  stemming 
right  so  nothing  gets  into  the  tunnel  complex,  for  obvious  reasons. 
But  I  don't  think  you  could  ever  guarantee  that  something  won't 
happen. 

It  is  a  little  frustrating,  and  discouraging  sometimes,  to  look  at 
what  you've  done,  and  realize  that  you  cannot  really  model 
containment  as  such.  I  suppose  one  would  like  to,  but  I  don't  know 
how  soon  that  will  be  possible. 

Carothers:  Well,  there  are  people  who  believe  you  can  build 
an  expert  system  and  just  punch  in  the  parameters  of  the  shot,  and 
it  will  tell  you  what  to  do. 

Peterson:  I  think  those  are  only  the  people  who  don't 
understand.  My  picture  of  the  expert  system  may  be  different  than 
yours.  I  see  the  expert  system  as  being  able  to  provide  you  with 
some  idea  of  things  that  have  gone  on  before,  and  some  idea  as  to 
why  they've  gone  on.  In  other  words,  if  you  come  up  with  a 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


599 


particular  problem  you  might  be  able  to  access  your  expert  system 
and  put  in  that  problem,  and  then  you  might  be  able  to  call  up  what 
Joe  LaComb  says  one  should  do.  But  I  think  it's  going  to  be 
meaningless  unless  you  also  get  the  Joe  LaComb  type  person  to  tell 
you  why  he  thinks  that  is  why  you  should  do  it.  If  you  don't  get  the 
understanding  behind  it,  I  think  just  having  the  facts  are  worthless. 
So  I  think  the  expert  system  might  give  you  some  aid  in  being  able 
to  learn  how  to  think  about  it,  or  at  least  know  what  previous  people 
have  thought  about  it. 

Carothers:  There's  more  to  knowledge  than  facts.  I  have  a 
little  poster  my  daughter  Margaret  once  gave  me.  It  has  a  picture 
of  three  apples.  One  is  green,  and  one  is  yellow,  and  one  is  red,  and 
it  says,  "Time  ripens  all  things.  No  one  is  born  wise."  And  so 
sometimes  it  is  worthwhile  to  talk  to  a  person  who  has  had  time 
enough  to  get  a  certain  amount  of  wisdom.  It's  often  easier  to  find 
facts. 

Peterson:  That  is  true.  People  like  Gary  Higgins  and  Russ  Duff 
and  Bob  Brownlee  and  Joe  LaComb  have  an  insight,  from  having 
been  around  the  program  for  so  many  years,  that  other  people  just 
do  not  have.  And  it  will  eventually  get  lost.  You  can't  learn  from 
them  all  the  things  that  they  know. 

I  think  when  I  first  came  to  S-Cubed  people  sort  of  believed 
they  understood  containment.  Now,  there  were  always  disagree¬ 
ments  within  the  community  as  to  what  we  understood,  but  one 
cannot  really  argue  against  success.  I  think  it  has  become  apparent, 
in  the  last  seven  tests,  say,  even  though  most  of  them  have  worked 
extremely  well,  that  some  of  the  things  we  thought  we  understood 
we  really  don't  understand  well  at  all.  And  I  think  everyone,  or 
nearly  everyone,  in  the  community  is  beginning  to  believe  that.  I 
think  that  belief  is  also  necessary  in  order  for  people  to  go  forward, 
and  so  I  think  that  has  been  a  benefit  in  gaining  understanding. 

If  you  get  down  to  the  more  technical  detail  of  things,  I  think 
we  have  hurt  ourselves  by  compartmentalizing  things.  There  have 
been  various  efforts  over  the  years  not  to  do  that,  but  for  whatever 
million  reasons,  that  is  the  way  it  has  come  out.  We  have  divided 
things  up  on  time  scales,  and  divided  things  up  between  work 
groups.  As  an  example,  we  look  at  pipe  flow,  and  we  look  at  cavity 
growth  and  cavity  conditions,  we  look  at  ground  motions,  we  look 
at  stemming  plug  formations,  and  we  look  at  late-time  leakage.  All 


600 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


of  those  things  are  very  important,  and  they  all  ought  to  be  looked 
at.  And  the  capability  to  look  at  each  one  of  these  needed  to  be 
developed.  But  when  you  break  them  up  in  order  to  develop  them, 
I  think  you  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  you've  only  broken  them  up 
so  you  could  look  at  them  individually  and  develop  some  type  of 
model.  You  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  they  are  interactive,  and  you 
forget  to  look  at  the  interactive  part.  I  personally  believe,  in  terms 
of  the  modeling  and  the  understanding,  that  is  the  next  direction 
that  one  has  to  go. 

In  other  words,  if  I  understand  material  properties  perfectly, 
I'm  not  sure  I'm  going  to  be  able  to  calculate  containment  anyway, 
because  I  don't  know  how  material  properties  interact  with  all  of 
these  other  things.  So,  I  see  that  as  the  thing  that  really  has  to  be 
addressed.  I  have  no  idea  how  to  do  it.  Everyone  has  ideas,  but  it's 
nothing  trivial,  so  one  shouldn't  look  at  it  and  say  people  over  the 
last  fifteen  years  have  neglected  it,  or  something  like  that.  It's  an 
extremely  difficult  thing  to  do.  I'm  not  sure  how  one  can  do  it,  but 
I  think  you  have  to  look  at  it. 

Another  thing  is  that  I  think  we  don't  even  know  how  to 
proceed  on  some  of  the  problems  from  the  physics  standpoint.  It 
isn't  that  you  don't  have  an  expert;  you  don't  even  know  what  you 
should  be  expert  in.  Jim,  you're  very  familiar  with  it,  you've  sat 
through  ail  of  these  things  for  years.  You  know,  for  example  that 
even  on  something  like  a  Mighty  Oak,  the  leakage  doesn't  come 
until  on  the  order  of  seconds  or  minutes.  Our  calculations  stop  at 
less  than  a  second.  If  we  have  a  stemming  column  that  "fails" 
enough  to  let  something  leak,  maybe  it  has  another  half  a  percent 
porosity  compared  to  one  that  works  perfectly.  You  don't  even 
know  exactly  what  physics  to  start  building  in,  or  how  to  do  it.  So, 

I  don't  even  know  how  to  interact  with  a  neighbor  who's  doing  a 
different  calculation.  I  don't  even  know  what  kind  of  an  expert  I 
ought  to  go  talk  to.  It's  just  that  there  are  very  fundamental 
questions  that  are  hard  to  get  an  answer  to.  I  don't  know  the 
answers.  We've  learned  a  lot,  but  I'm  not  sure  that  we  understand 
containment.  We  know  a  lot  more  about  it  than  we  did,  but  I  don't 
think  we  really  understand  it. 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


601 


Carter  Broyles 

Broyles:  I  think  we  at  Sandia  still  take  seriously  the  charge  we 
got  when  we  went  back  to  testing  after  Baneberry,  which  was  that 
each  of  the  three  Labs  was  charged  with  an  aggressive,  active  RstD 
program  for  containment.  And  I've  used  that  to  justify  our 
programm.  A  lot  of  people  say  Sandia  doesn't  sponsor  tests  any 
more,  so  why  should  it  waste  its  time?  It  seems  to  me  that  we  have 
served  a  useful  purpose  as  an  independent  group,  without  an  ax  to 
grind,  a  lot  of  times.  Perhaps  it's  useful  to  have  that  third  party 
there  at  the  CEP,  and  other  places. 

Carothers:  It  is.  And,  your  people  have  produced  a  lot  of  very 
useful  data. 

Broyles:  Well,  we  certainly  have  had  a  better  record  than  a  lot 
of  other  organizations.  We've  had  a  lot  more  continuity  and 
devotion,  but  you  can  get  into  all  sorts  of  philosophical  arguments 
having  nothing  to  do  with  containment  about  what  produces  good 
results.  I  still  hold,  as  a  personal  belief,  that  if  you  have  the  total 
responsibility  for  the  program,  as  well  as  the  measurements,  you're 
going  to  come  out  on  the  whole  with  better  results.  It's  not  that 
you've  got  better  people,  but  you  don't  have  the  artificial  divisions 
where  things  tend  to  fall  through  the  cracks  that  you  have  if  you 
have  six  different  contractors  doing  different  parts  of  the  job,  and 
then  trying  to  have  what  is  essentially  a  contract  monitor  put  it  all 
together. 

Something  I've  seen  over  the  years,  probably  more  in  the  last 
five  than  in  the  early  days,  is  a  more  cooperative,  not  only  attitude, 
but  effort  on  the  part  of  all  of  the  players  toward  working  together, 
sharing  their  capabilities.  I  think  DNA,  and  LASL,  and  Livermore 
working  together,  reinforcing  each  other,  has  contributed  a  lot 
more  now  than  it  did  in  the  early  days  of  Baneberry  and  prior  to  that. 

But  everybody  has,  Sandia  just  as  much  as  anybody  else,  the 
feeding  that  if  we  didn't  do  it  we  can't  trust  it.  When  you've  got 
the  responsibility  -  -  that's  something  that  a  lot  of  people  in  the 
system  have  never  faced.  It's  like  the  General  who's  developing  the 
Minuteman,  or  the  Admiral  who's  developing  the  Trident.  When 
his  neck  is  on  the  line,  and  he  has  to  guarantee  something,  that's  one 
thing.  If  you  sit  down  and  ask  for  a  scientific  judgment,  that's 
another  thing.  What  you  demand  in  proof,  I  think,  is  justifiably 


602 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


different  in  the  two  cases.  !  can  be  scientifically  very  certain  that 
something  is  true,  but  am  I  willing  to  bet  the  nation's  security  on  it? 
That's  different,  and  the  proof  I'm  going  to  ask  for  is  going  to  be 
different.  I  can  recognize  that,  when  I  sit  back  and  try  to  be 
objective.  There  are  a  lot  of  people  not  connected  with  the  test 
business  who  don't  really  understand  that,  because  they've  never 
been  in  those  kinds  of  positions. 

Tom  Scolman 

Scolman:  Frankly,  my  biggest  concern  about  containment  is 
that  the  CEP,  over  the  years,  has  evolved  into  some  kind  of  ritual 
raindance,  which  forces  us  to  do  things  not  because  they  make  a  hell 
of  a  lot  of  sense,  but  because  it's  what  we've  always  done. 
Unfortunately,  while  we  at  one  time  had  an  organization  called  a 
Containment  Research  Committee,  one  really  can't  do  research  on 
containment,  because  you're  not  allowed  to  do  an  experiment  that 
pushes  you  beyond  the  known  containment  boundaries.  So,  we  are 
more  or  less  forced  to  do  things  the  way  we've  always  done  them 
before.  Take  one  of  the  points  that  I  referred  to  earlier;  the  fact  that 
the  containment  scheme  that  Los  Alamos  uses,  at  least,  was  largely 
designed  in  the  days  when  all  holes  were  cased,  and  I  think  many  of 
the  things  we  do  don't  really  make  an  awful  lot  of  sense,  or  are 
completely  justifiable  in  the  days  when  a  majority  of  our  shots  are 
done  in  uncased  holes. 

For  another  example,  I  think  there's  a  great  deal  more  to  the 
containment  business  than  depth  of  burial,  which  always  comes 
from  the  same  scaled  depth.  That  assumes  you're  shooting  in  a 
known,  homogeneous  media,  and  you  never  do.  I  argue,  for 
example,  that  with  the  faulting  that  exists  at  the  Nevada  Test  Site 
we  have  probably,  without  knowing  it,  fired  in  almost  any  configu¬ 
ration  you  could  have  managed  with  respect  to  a  fault.  And  yet  we 
sometimes  reject  shot  locations  because  of  proximity  to  faults.  We 
worry  about  reflections  from  hard  layers,  and  yet  we  can't  find  those 
hard  layers  when  we  do  seismic  work.  We  know  the  layers  are  there, 
but  do  they  matter? 

Carothers:  What  you're  saying  is  seismic  work  uses  acoustic 
reflections  and  you  can't  see  those  layers.  So,  how  can  the  shock 
wave  from  the  shot  see  them? 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


603 


Scolman:  I've  asked  that  question  several  times  and  haven't 
had  any  answer  yet. 

Local  geology  is  important.  There  are  blocks,  joints,  faults, 
little  ones,  big  ones.  I  think  what  you  come  back  to  is  the  fact  that 
you  cannot  calculate  in  the  detail  that  would  be  necessary,  for  a 
number  of  reasons.  The  thing  you  really  fall  back  on  is  previous 
experience.  And  that  drives  you  into  doing  things  that,  while  they 
may  not  be  completely  justifiable  in  a  theoretical  sense,  at  least 
they've  worked,  and  it's  hard  to  go  away  from  them. 

Carl  Keller 

Keller:  At  DNA  I  think  we  had  a  different  concept  of  what  the 
future  held  than  the  Laboratories  did.  We  had  the  time  to  develop 
test  concepts,  and  the  presumption  was  that  we  were  going  to  keep 
on  testing,  and  that  we  would  need  these  things.  The  Laboratory 
people  tended  to  be  in  a  reactive  situation  where,  if  they  were  going 
to  spend  anything  on  research,  it  had  to  be  identified  as  necessary 
to  do  a  particular  shot.  And  that  shot  almost  never  was  more  than 
a  year  or  so  away,  and  so  all  the  work  had  to  be  done  at  least  six 
months  before  the  shot.  So,  what  was  done  was  generally  only  in 
reaction  to  a  unique  geologic  circumstance,  or  a  unique  test 
geometry. 


Bruce  Wheeler 

Carothers:  To  what  extent  do  you  think  the  containment 
requirements,  which  were  severe,  had  an  impact  on  the  programs 
you  were  trying  to  accomodate?  Did  they  really  constraint  you? 

Wheeler:  I  don't  think  the  containment  requirements  had  a 
great  impact  in  terms  of  how  long  it  took  to  get  the  test  ready  -  -  to 
build  it,  and  get  ready  to  go.  They  added  some  cost,  but  it  wasn't 
a  lot  in  terms  of  the  overall  cost.  Back  in  Misty  North  times,  that 
was  a  twenty-five  million  dollar  shot.  Diamond  Skulls  was  thirty-two 
million.  Those  two  shots  today  would  probably  be  a  hundred 
million  each. 


604 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


So,  whatever  incremental  cost  you  could  attribute  to  the 
increased  containment  concerns  had  to  be  a  small  percentage.  So, 
I  never  looked  at  containment  as  something  that  got  in  our  way; 
rather  I  looked  at  it  as  something  that  if  we  did  it  right  would  help 
the  program  continue. 


Billy  Hudson 

Carothers:  Billy,  it  has  been  my  impression  that  you  are  not 
a  strong  believer  in  the  residual  stress  field  as  a  basic,  or  the  basic, 
mechanism  for  the  containment  of  a  shot.  Comments? 

Hudson:  So  there's  residual  stress.  We  may  always  have 
residual  stress  of  some  sort,  but  is  residual  stress  the  key  to 
containment?  I  can  imagine  residual  stress  in  a  medium  comprised 
of  marbles,  but  marbles  wouldn't  be  a  very  good  container  for  high 
pressure  gas.  Cracks  can  open,  the  ground  can  shift,  rocks  can  shift 
around.  At  a  quarter  of  kilobar  or  so,  which  is  sort  of  where  the 
residual  stress  regime  is,  you  wouldn't  expect  these  openings  to  be 
smashed  shut  again.  So  it's  not  clear  that  residual  stress  can  affect 
containment  in  the  first  place,  even  if  it  is  there. 

An  interesting  puzzle  is  Baneberry.  We  didn't  talk  very  much 
about  residual  stress  before  Baneberry,  if  we  did  at  all.  The 
Baneberry  release  didn't  begin  until  something  like  three  and  a  half 
minutes  after  the  shot.  It's  hard  to  tie  that  time  into  the  models  that 
have  been  proposed.  Most  of  the  models  would  show  failure  at 
much  earlier  times. 

I  think  containment  is  a  combination  of  hydrofractures,  leak¬ 
age  into  porous  storage  areas,  residual  stress  fields  which  prevent 
continuing  hydrofractures,  good  stemming  plugs.  It's  all  of  that. 
We  know  that  the  failure  of  a  stemming  column  can  cause  a  release, 
but  probably  there's  not  nearly  as  critical  a  relationship  as  far  as  the 
residual  stress,  or  the  hydrofractures  are  concerned. 

Carothers:  What  about  the  difference  in  the  containment 
between  the  hundred  kiioton  shots  and  the  one  kiioton  shots? 

Hudson:  There  was  a  perceived  difference  that  the  big  shots 
didn't  leak,  the  little  ones  did.  But  as  we  started  to  take  measure¬ 
ments,  as  we  began  to  get  some  data  down  hole  in  the  stemming 
column  on  the  higher  yield  events,  we  discovered  their  behavior,  at 
least  in  the  stemming  column,  was  much  more  like  the  low  yield 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


605 


events  than  we  had  suspected.  At  one  time  the  data  seemed  to 
indicate  that  if  events  were  of  higher  yield  than  between  ten  and 
twenty  kilotons,  gas  just  didn't  get  out  of  the  cavity.  But  then  we 
started  making  measurements  in  the  stemming  column  on  events 
with  yields  in  those  ranges,  and  we  discovered  that  gas  got  out  of  the 
cavity  just  about  as  often,  and  went  as  high,  as  it  did  on  low  yield 
events.  So,  high  and  low  yield  events  may  not  be  as  different  as  we 
once  thought.  It  may  be  a  matter  of  depth  more  than  yield.  If  you 
bury  them  deep  enough,  even  though  the  yield  is  a  lot  higher,  they 
may  be  more  likely  to  contain.  We  really  don't  understand  the 
difference,  but  the  phenomenology  is  not  as  different  as  we  once 
thought  it  was. 

Carothers:  There  is  an  argument  about  the  observed  lack  of 
releases  from  high  yield  shots,  advanced  by  Gary  Higgins.  He  says, 
"Well,  that's  easy  to  understand,  because  you  guys  are  using  the 
wrong  scaling  law.  The  containment  depth  really  doesn't  go  as  as 
the  yield  to  the  1  / 3  power.  Because  there's  the  gravity  field  it  really 
goes  as  the  yield  to  the  1/3.4  power,  properly.  There's  no 
difference  at  one  kiloton,  but  the  higher  the  yield,  the  more 
conservative  you're  being  if  you  use  an  exponent  of  1/3  instead  of 
1/3.4.  You  could  have  shot  Cannikin  at  4000  feet,  rather  than 
6000,  perfectly  safely,  using  the  right  scaling." 

Hudson:  The  scaling  laws,  it  seems  to  me,  only  concern 
prompt  venting,  not  the  seepages.  With  regard  to  seepages,  I  don't 
think  the  bomb  knows  how  deep  it  is.  It  just  tries,  however  it  can, 
to  find  it's  way  to  the  surface,  in  the  dynamic  case  there  are  all  sorts 
of  things  going  on.  There  is  spall.  If  it's  deep  enough  spall  is  not 
a  problem.  You  have  large  fractures  formed  radial  to  the  cavity. 
Clearly,  if  it's  deep  enough  none  of  those  are  going  to  get  close  to 
the  surface.  As  far  as  the  dynamic  features  are  concerned,  Gary 
Higgins  may  be  absolutely  right.  It  could  very  well  be  that  the 
scaling  rules  we  use  really  don't  apply.  Unfortunately  we  don't 
understand  these  relationships  well  enough  to  argue  convincingly 
that  we  should  bury  higher  yield  shots  at  shallower  scaled  depths. 

Carothers:  Well,  after  Baneberry  there  wasn't  any  testing  for 
about  six  months.  Prior  to  that  time,  about  a  third  of  the  shots 
released  activity,  sometimes  a  lot,  sometimes  a  little.  After 
Baneberry,  that  pretty  much  stopped.  What  happened?  I  don't 


606 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


think  you  learned  anything  new  in  those  six  months,  but  all  the 
leakages  stopped,  with  the  exception  of  four  events  over  twenty 
years.  What  do  you  think  accounts  for  that? 

Hudson:  One  cause  was  that  we  adopted  a  minimum  depth  of 
burial.  Statistically,  for  events  sited  in  alluvium  before  that  time, 
approximately  twice  as  many  events  involved  a  release  if  they  were 
buried  shallower  than  500  feet,  as  those  events  buried  deeper  than 
600  feet.  And  so,  one  of  the  things  we  did  was  to  adopt  a  minimum 
depth  of  burial.  What  that  did  was  to  avoid  some  of  the  higher 
carbonate  content  alluvium  near  the  surface. 

Even  before  Baneberry  we  had  adopted  the  practice  of  putting 
cable  gas  blocks  on  all  cables.  I  think  that  was  just  shortly  before 
Baneberry.  The  combination  of  those  two  acts  -  -  putting  in  the  gas 
blocks,  and  increasing  the  depth  of  burial  -  -  I  think  was  primarily 
responsible  for  eliminating  most  of  those  releases. 

Right  after  Baneberry  we  did  quite  a  few  things  that  we  later 
stopped  doing,  because  we  didn't  need  them.  For  example,  when 
we  had  experiments  in  the  emplacement  pipe  we  had  sections  of  the 
pipe  that  were  malleable.  We  thought  that  would  help  the  ground 
shock  closure.  These  soft  pipe  sections  were  fairly  expensive.  We 
never  did  show  whether  they  helped  or  didn't  help,  and  after  a  while 
we  decided  we  didn't  need  them.  We  did  a  lot  of  things  right  after 
Baneberry.  Everything  we  could  think  of,  almost,  became  a  viable 
suggestion  as  a  solution  to  some  problem. 

Carothers:  The  minimum  depth  of  burial  of  600  feet  has 
carried  on  to  today.  There  are  people  who  occasionally  grumble 
about  that  when  they  do  a  twenty  ton  shot.  Do  you  think  it's  really 
needed  for  shots  like  that? 

Hudson:  The  answer  is,  "Of  course  not.  It's  not  always 
needed."  The  problem  is,  you  never  know  exactly  what  the  yield 
is  going  to  be.  You  never  know  for  sure  when  you're  going  to  need 
that  depth.  If  the  maximum  credible  yield  is  really  twenty  tons,  you 
probably  don't  need  the  600  feet.  Then  you  have  to  decide  what 
you  do  need,  and  why  the  shot  is  going  to  be  contained  as  well  at 
a  shallower  depth.  After  a  while  people  would  probably  decide  that 
it  was  easier  and  cheaper  just  to  use  600  feet. 


Thoughts,  Opinions,  Concerns 


607 


Actually,  it's  questionable  whether  we  should  be  shooting  in 
alluvium  at  all.  You  will  notice  that  there  have  been  very  few  shots 
in  alluvium  since  Agrini.  Agrini  was  a  shot  in  alluvium,  and  there 
was  a  release  through  a  strange  subsidence  crater.  The  crater  was 
something  like  200  feet  deep;  very  deep  compared  to  its  diameter. 
So  there  was  probably  much  less  rubble  to  filter  the  gas  and  debris 
before  they  got  to  the  surface  than  on  a  normal  shot. 

After  intense  study  of  the  Agrini  event,  we  decided  the  only 
thing  we  could  have  done  that  would  really  have  guaranteed  that  we 
didn't  have  that  late  time  release  would  have  been  to  avoid  the 
noncondensable  gas,  which  is  primarily  the  carbon  dioxide  released 
from  the  carbonate  minerals  in  the  cavity  region.  While  no  one 
made  a  public  statement  about  it,  for  several  years  we  did  not  fire 
events  in  alluvium. 

Statistics  suggested  that  it  you  stayed  at  carbonate  contents 
below  5%  it  was  unlikely  that  you  would  have  a  late  time  release 
problem.  Above  5%  you're  much  more  likely  to.  We  had  the  Riola 
event,  which  was  a  case  where  a  plug  failed,  and  we  had  a  late  time 
release.  The  carbonate  content  for  Riola  was  only  about  2  1/2%, 
so  people  tended  to  ignore  the  carbonate  problem,  and  focus  on  the 
plug  that  failed.  Then  Agrini  came  along,  where  we  had  a  late  time 
release  with  a  strange  subsidence  crater;  and  the  carbonate  content 
was  2.54%. 

I  argued  that  in  both  cases  we  might  very  well  have  had  a 
release  without  the  strange  occurrences  associated  with  those 
events,  and  that  if  we  wanted  to  avoid  that  sort  of  release  we  should 
stay  out  of  the  alluvium.  Often  we  really  can't  tell  what  the 
carbonate  content  is.  We  make  measurements,  but  they're  not 
representative,  and  it  could  be  that  the  carbonate  content  at  either 
of  those  two  sites  was  high  enough  to  cause  a  release. 

In  tuff  we've  only  had  one  event,  as  far  as  I  know,  in  the  history 
of  testing,  where  there  was  a  late  time  release,  and  no  one  really 
understands  why  it  happened  on  that  shot.  I  talked  to  Larry 
McKague  about  that,  and  he  suggested  that  perhaps  there  was  a 
pocket  of  stream  gravel,  in  the  vicinity  of  the  working  point,  that 
could  have  given  rise  to  that  release.  If  you  throw  that  one  out  as 
maybe  being  a  weird  geometry,  there  just  isn't  enough  carbonate  in 
tuffaceous  material  to  be  a  problem.  But  you  can  always  have  it  in 
alluvium. 


608 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Billy  Hudson's  closing  words  perhaps  make  a  suitable 
summary  and  ending  for  this  book. 

I  guess  the  upshot  of  all  that  is,  we  still  don't 
really  understand  containment  very  well. 


609 


610 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


611 


APPENDIX 

The  people  who  made  this  book  possible.  Somethings  about 
them  in  their  words. 


612 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


613 


Fred  App 

LANL  —  Alternate  Panel  Member 

I  went  to  school  at  Penn  State,  and  my  degree  is  in  geophysics. 
I  graduated  from  there  in  1959.  From  there  I  went  into  the  oil 
patch  with  Continental  Oil  Company,  and  spent  six  years  in 
exploration  geophysics,  mostly  with  seismographs.  It  was  mostly 
field  work,  but  there  was  some  analysis.  About  the  first  four  years 
were  field  work,  and  the  last  two  were  mostly  in  the  office. 

In  the  field  we  did  a  standard  type  of  reflection  geophone 
seismic  survey  to  determine  the  structural  configuration  of  the 
strata.  One  way  of  doing  that  is  to  put  the  energy  source,  dynamite, 
down  a  hundred  foot  deep  hole.  You  have  several  holes  spaced 
some  distance  apart,  depending  on  what  kind  of  a  survey  it  is,  and 
then  there  is  a  surface  geophone  layout  to  pick  up  the  signals.  We 
have  done  them  at  the  Test  Site. 


6 1 4  CAGING  THE  DRAGON 

There  are  various  types  of  surveys  that  are  made;  there  are 
explosion  surveys,  and  vibroseis  surveys.  The  vibroseis  sends  out  a 
sweep  of  signal  frequencies  in  about  six  or  seven  seconds,  and  no 
frequency  repeats  itself  in  the  sweep.  So,  it's  a  unique  wave  form 
that  goes  out,  and  they  cross  correlate  what  comes  back  with  the 
sweeps,  and  you  end  up  with  your  actual  time  history  recording. 
The  vibroseis  system  was  invented  by  Conoco,  and  at  the  time  I  was 
working  with  them  nobody  else  was  licensed  to  use  the  system.  Only 
Conoco  had  it. 

There  were  two  reasons  why  I  left  Conoco.  One,  I  simply  got 
tired  of  that  particular  line  of  work.  I  wanted  to  move  into  hard  rock 
geophysics,  that  I  thought  would  be  more  interesting.  The  other 
reason  was  that  in  order  to  be  successful,  and  really  advance  with 
the  company,  you  would,  almost  by  definition,  end  up  in  Houston. 
That  was  the  headquarters,  and  was  not  an  end  point  I  desired  to  be 
at. 

Another  option  was  Ponca  City,  Oklahoma,  which  was  better. 
It's  north  of  Oklahoma  City.  Of  course,  if  you  look  at  a  frequency 
chart  for  tornados,  you'll  see  a  contour  closure  that  takes  in  Wichita 
to  the  north,  and  Oklahoma  City  to  the  south.  And  Ponca  City  is 
right  in  the  middle.  But  it's  a  nice  place. 

So,  for  those  reasons  I  decided  I  wanted  to  try  something 
different,  and  for  a  short  while  I  was  with  Anaconda,  in  Butte, 
Montana.  That  was  a  mistake.  It  was  copper  mining,  in  deep  mines. 
In  Montana  I  was  working  below  sea  level,  an  indication  of  how  deep 
the  mines  are.  One  mine  was  6000  feet  deep.  It  took  a  while  to 
get  down,  and  to  get  back  up. 

As  far  as  I  was  concerned,  that  whole  operation  was  very 
dangerous.  The  company  itself  was  not  very  safety  conscious. 
There  were  many  ladders  with  rungs  missing,  and  that  sort  of  thing. 
They  had  No  Smoking  signs  right  at  the  shaft,  and  of  course 
everybody  would  be  smoking  —  and  that  was  the  only  way  out.  I 
left  primarily  because  of  the  safety  problems. 

I  returned  to  my  wife's  home  town  in  North  Dakota.  I  had  quit 
Anaconda  without  having  another  job  lined  up.  I  started  reading  the 
classified  ads  in  the  papers,  and  applied  for  and  got  a  job  with 
Control  Data.  Control  Data  at  that  time  was  a  booming  outfit,  and 
the  reason  they  were  booming  was  because  places  like  Los  Alamos 
and  Livermore  were  buying  their  6600  at  that  time. 


615 


At  that  time  Control  Data  was  flush  with  cash,  but  they  were 
shy  of  programmers.  So  they  decided  to  try  an  experiment.  They 
decided  to  take  applicants  from  everywhere  —  one  person  might  be 
an  art  major,  just  out  of  school.  Another  person  might  be  an 
electrical  engineer  who  had  been  in  the  business  for  ten  or  fifteen 
years.  In  one  case  they  took  a  seismic  explorationist,  namely  me. 
I  believe  there  were  about  35  in  the  group.  We  were  brought  in  to 
Minneapolis,  but  they  did  not  bring  our  families  because  it  was  quite 
intensive  training;  days,  nights,  and  weekends.  You  had  enough 
time  to  sleep  and  that  was  it.  A  second  reason  reason  for  excluding 
families  was  because  if  you  failed  the  course,  you  were  not  hired.  I 
successfully  completed  the  course,  and  became  a  permanent  em¬ 
ployee  of  Control  Data.  I  stayed  with  them  for  five  years.  However, 
all  along  I  knew  I  did  not  want  to  remain  in  a  large  city,  so  I 
continued  searching  for  employment. 

In  1 97 1  I  read  an  ad  in  the  Minneapolis  Tribune,  offering  jobs 
at  Los  Alamos,  with  talk  about  the  beautiful  mountains,  and  skiing, 
and  hunting,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  These  jobs  were  for  C 
Division,  which  is  the  computer  division.  I  applied,  and  they  invited 
me  down.  I  talked  to  two  C  groups.  In  the  meantime  Bob  Brownlee 
happened  to  see  my  resume,  and  he  asked  to  interview  me  as  well. 
After  I  had  interviewed  the  three  groups  I  had  no  doubt  about  my 
first  choice.  The  way  Bob  described  the  containment  work,  and 
what  was  involved,  appealed  to  me. 


616 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Bob  Bass 

Sandia  -  -  Shock  Physics 

I'm  a  physicist,  so  to  speak.  I  went  to  school  in  Lawrenceburg, 
Missouri,  which  is  near  Kansas  City,  in  my  grade  school  days  and 
high  school.  My  high  school  background  is  rather  mixed-up,  and 
strange,  and  messy  -  -  screwed  up  by  the  war. 

Missouri  had  a  very  strange,  and  little  known  situation.  It  was 
patterned  after  the  University  of  Chicago,  where  you  can  start  to 
college  whenever  you're  ready,  and  whenever  you  can  pass  the 
entrance  exams.  There  was  not  even  a  limit,  at  that  time,  on  how 
many  hours  of  high  school  credits  you  had  to  have.  So,  I  and  about 
four  or  five  other  people  in  my  high  school  class  decided  we  had  had 
enough  of  high  school  We  decided,  "Hey,  we've  had  enough  of  this. 
We  know  everything.  Let's  go  to  college." 


617 


So,  1  started  in  college,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  at  a  place  called 
Central  Missouri  State  College,  which  is  now  Central  Missouri  State 
University.  By  the  time  my  high  school  class  graduated  I  was  well 
along  as  junior  in  college,  mainly  because  there  was  this  Navy  V-l  2 
program  at  the  school,  so  it  was  on  a  trimester  basis.  So,  you  could 
get  sixty  hours  in  one  year,  and  I  did.  By  the  time  my  high  school 
class  graduated  I  think  I  had  about  seventy  hours  of  college  credit. 
And  I  had  no  problems  with  that  at  all.  It  was  easy,  duck-soup  easy. 
I  was  also  helped  by  the  fact  that  I  was  six  feet  seven  inches  tall  at 
that  time,  and  weighed  about  220  pounds. 

I  stayed  there  for  one  year  plus,  and  then  went  to  the 
University  of  Missouri.  1  started  out  in  chemical  engineering,  or 
something  like  that.  I  had  studied  more  chemistry  than  anything 
else,  but  it  was  all  physical  chemistry.  Then  the  draft  came  along, 
and  I  ended  up  in  the  Navy,  at  first. 

I  went  to  San  Diego,  and  went  through  part  of  boot  camp  there, 
and  then  they  discovered  I  was  too  tall  to  be  in  the  Navy.  The  war 
was  over,  so  they  said,  "Out."  I  said,  "Fine.  I'll  go."  So,  I  went 
back  to  Central  Missouri  State,  and  graduated  right  away.  Over  all, 
I  think  I  finished  in  two  and  a  half  years.  The  degree  turned  out  to 
be  a  double  major  in  chemistry  and  physics,  with  some  background 
in  economics,  of  all  things.  And  what  are  you  going  to  do  with  that? 

So,  I  went  looking  around  a  little  for  a  few  months,  doing 
nothing,  and  I  ended  up  going  to  graduate  school  at  the  University 
of  Missouri,  in  physics.  I  had  discovered  that  chemistry  was  a  nice, 
interesting  field,  with  some  very  nice  people  as  professors.  Some 
of  the  most  entertaining  people  I  have  ever  known  were  organic 
chemists.  But,  I  didn't  feel  too  comfortable  with  all  of  that,  so  I 
ended  up  at  the  University  of  Missouri,  in  physics.  I  fiddled  along 
at  Missouri,  not  being  the  greatest  student  in  the  world,  to  be  honest 
about  it  all.  But  I  was  chugging  along,  and  then. came  Vietnam. 

At  that  time  there  was  no  such  thing  as  an  educational 
deferment,  and  so  I  was  draft  bait,  and  I  ended  up  in  the  Army.  I 
ended  up  in  Fort  Hood,  Texas.  Just  about  that  time  they  were 
beginning  to  think  there  should  be  educational  deferments,  and  they 
had  begun  selecting  out  people  with  some  educational  background. 
They  were  sending  these  guys  back  through  the  Pentagon  for 


618 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


assignment,  as  enlisted  men,  all  over  the  United  States.  I  ended  up 
at  Fort  Myer,  in  Washington,  and  at  that  time  they  were  getting 
ready  to  do  a  thing  called  Operation  Windstorm. 

Operation  Windstorm  was  an  underground  shot,  scheduled  for 
Amchitka  in  1 95 1 .  It  was  to  be  a  cratering  event.  So,  they  had  ail 
these  plans  going  forward,  and  the  Signal  Corps  had  a  major  project 
to  measure  the  residual  contamination  from  a  cratering  burst.  They 
contracted  this  job  out  to  the  National  Bureau  of  Standards,  and 
lucky  me,  I  got  to  go  to  the  National  Bureau  of  Standards,  in 
Washington,  as  a  civilian  guest  worker.  The  Army  sent  me  there, 
on  travel  status,  and  I  spent  two  years  on  travel  status  for  the  Army, 
working  at  the  Bureau  of  Standards. 

Then  it  became  obvious  that  Amchitka  was  the  wrong  place  to 
be  using  as  a  test  site,  because,  for  one  thing,  the  Russians  were 
listeningin  on  itall  the  time.  Atthe  NBS  we  had  buiita  huge  system, 
to  be  used  on  Amchitka,  to  measure  residual  contamination. 
Everything  was  in  waterproof  packaging.  It  was  to  be  installed  in 
prefabed  underground  concrete  structures  that  had  been  built  by 
the  Navy  up  in  Seattle,  or  somewhere.  We  were  all  done;  we  were 
ready  to  go.  The  Navy  was  ready  to  start  shipping  these  prefab 
structures  to  Amchitka.  And  what  did  they  do?  They  turned 
around  and  shipped  them  all  to  Nevada,  and  this  became  instrumen¬ 
tation  on  Jangle  ESS.  So,  we  had  all  these  waterproof  concrete 
bunkers  out  in  the  desert. 

The  detectors  were  all  underground  in  these  structures,  and 
they  jumped  up  out  of  the  ground  after  the  blast  wave  went  by;  there 
were  elevators  to  raise  them  up.  There  were  1 2 1  channels,  and  we 
recorded  121  channels  of  perfect  data.  Of  course,  we  had  two 
years  to  get  ready.  And  in  those  days  we  had  an  unlimited  amount 
of  money,  and  we  had  the  whole  backing  of  the  National  Bureau  of 
Standards  to  get  good  data.  I  have  never  been  associated  with 
something  like  that  before  or  since. 

When  I  got  out  I  went  back  to  finish  my  doctorate.  Then  I  made 
the  greatest  mistake  of  my  life.  I  left  the  Signal  Corps  in  July,  drove 
back  to  Missouri,  drove  back  to  the  campus  of  the  University  of 
Missouri,  and  went  to  visit  friends  in  the  veteran's  housing  area.  I 
looked  at  the  poverty  those  guys  were  living  in,  and  I  said,  "I  can't 
do  this.  There's  no  way."  I  was  making  850  dollars  a  month  in 


619 


1953.  That  was  pretty  good  income.  I  was  single.  When  I  was 
living  in  Nevada  we  were  getting  expenses  the  whole  time.  I  was 
very  rich.  It  was  more  money  than  I  knew  what  to  do  with. 

Looking  at  the  campus  environment,  I  couldn't  do  it.  1  said, 
"I'm  not  going  to  do  that.  That's  not  for  me,  right  now.  I'm  making 
too  much  money."  So,  I  went  to  work  at  a  radio  station,  and  fiddled 
around.  At  the  time,  though,  1  had  met  some  people  from  Sandia, 
working  at  the  Test  Site.  I  liked  what  I  saw,  I  liked  what  they  did, 
and  I  said  to  myself,  "The  Department  of  Defense  is  on  the  outer 
edge  of  all  this.  I'd  rather  be  in  the  middle."  So,  I  knew  people  from 
Sandia,  and  that's  where  my  formal  education  stopped  for  a  while. 
I  decided  to  capitalize  on  what  I  had  done  through  the  years,  and 
keep  on  making  money.  But  I  went  to  work  at  Sandia  for  500  dollars 
a  month,  so  I  took  a  big  cut. 


620 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Robert  Brownlee 
Los  Alamos  —  Panel  Member 

1  did  my  undergraduate  work  at  Sterling  College,  which  is  a 
small  four-year  college  in  central  Kansas.  When  I  was  an  under¬ 
graduate  I  couldn't  decide  whether  to  major  in  math  or  physics,  so 
I  majored  in  both  of  them.  I  got  my  degree,  but  meanwhile  a  war 
had  intervened.  Then  1  went  to  the  University  of  Kansas,  where  I 
got  my  master's  degree.  After  that  I  decided,  "I  think  I'll  just  go 
into  astronomy."  It  turned  out  that  all  my  training  was  not 
immediately  applicable  to  astronomy,  so  I  had  to  go  back  and  pick 
up  all  the  undergraduate  courses  in  astronomy.  I  then  went  to 
Indiana  University,  where  I  got  my  Ph.D.  from  Indiana  University 
in  1955.  1  got  my  degree  in  astronomy  and  astrophysics. 

Carothers:  Well,  that's  an  impractical,  but  interesting  branch 
of  physics. 


621 


Precisely  what  my  father  said.  When  I  graduated  the  as¬ 
tronomy  world  was  a  closed  system.  The  heads  of  the  astronomy 
departments  in  these  several  schools  decided,  in  some  dark  closet, 
two  or  three  times  in  the  course  of  the  school  year,  which  of  their 
students  they  would  graduate,  and  which  they  would  flunk  out. 
What  they  did  was  match  the  graduates  with  the  openings  they  were 
going  to  have  the  following  year.  So,  when  you  graduated,  the  head 
of  your  department  whispered  in  your  ear,  "You  should  apply  for 
that  job  over  there.  You'll  have  a  good  chance  of  getting  that  one, 
but  don't  bother  applying  for  that  other  one,  because  you  don't 
have  a  chance."  I  think  the  year  I  got  my  Ph.D.  there  were  four  of 
us  in  the  U.S.,  because  that  was  all  the  openings  there  were.  But  the 
year  I  graduated  I  had  two  job  offers,  which  was  twice  as  many  as 
you  were  supposed  to  have. 

It  came  as  a  great  shock  to  my  father.  "Why  would  anybody 
pay  you  to  know  this  stuff,  which  does  not  contribute  to  the  growing 
of  any  food  of  which  I'm  aware?"  As  you  can  see,  I  grew  up  on  the 
farm.  That  roots  you  in  a  tradition  that  allows  you  to  see  pretty 
clearly,  and  detect  pretty  quickly,  city  slickers  and  charlatans  of 
various  kinds  who  always  think  farmers  are,  after  all,  dumb  or  they 
wouldn't  be  farming.  Some  of  the  wisest  people  I've  ever  met  have 
been  sitting  out  there  on  the  farm.  Why  and  how  do  they  get  wise 
-  -  not  just  knowledgeable,  but  wise?  Well,  I'll  tell  you.  They  sit 
plowing.  You  can  plow  one  field  for  weeks  where  I  grew  up,  and  you 
do  something  with  your  mind  during  that  time.  You  can't  sleep,  but 
you  can  think.  And  you  have  time  to  sort  out  a  lot  of  things.  I  think 
all  farmers  are  philosophers. 

I  think  I  was  about  five  when  I  asked  my  father  what  made  the 
sun  shine.  He  said,  "Nobody  knows."  Well,  I  was  greatly  shocked, 
and  I  can  remember  saying,  "But  Uncle  Mason  would  know."  And 
he  said,  "No,  Uncle  Mason  doesn't  know  either,  because  nobody 
knows  what  makes  the  sun  shine."  I  was  in  awe  that  here  was 
something  that  no  one  knew. 

It  turns  out  that  was  almost  identically  the  time  that  Hans  Bethe 
first  figured  it  out.  He  used  to  come  to  Los  Alamos  regularly  every 
year,  and  he  still  does  occasionally.  Sometimes  I  would  work  with 
him  on  something,  and  when  I  would  sit  in  the  room  with  him  I 
would  think,  "Here  is  the  man,  the  very  first  man  in  the  history  of 
the  world  who  understood  what  makes  the  sun  shine,  and  he's  right 
here  in  this  room."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  still  feel  that  kind  of  awe. 


622 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Because  you  see,  to  me  that  was  vastly  more  important  than  how 
much  wheat  we  were  going  to  get  that  summer.  But,  of  course,  I 
was  living  on  the  wheat,  so  that  was  important  too. 

I  regarded  that  question,  "What  makes  the  sun  shine?"  as  just 
awesome.  My  dad  didn't  realize  that  would  change  the  history  of 
the  world.  I  didn't  realize  it  either,  but  I  came  along  at  just  the  right 
time.  When  i  got  my  degree  in  '55,  I  took  the  job  that  nobody 
counted  on  me  getting.  That  was  the  one  at  Los  Alamos.  The  other 
offer  was  for  the  vacancy  in  the  Astronomy  Department  in  Nash¬ 
ville,  Tennessee.  That  was  the  job  that  had  been  programmed  for 
me  to  get. 

Carothers:  Were  these  professors  aware  that  Los  Alamos  was 
interested  in  astronomers,  or  willing  to  hire  them,  or  was  this  a 
surprise? 

Brownlee:  They  were  aware  of  it,  and  unalterably  opposed.  It 
turned  out  that  a  colleague  also  came  to  Los  Alamos,  and  he  and  I 
were  ostracized  by  the  astronomical  community  for  some  years 
because  we  had  gone  to  Los  Alamos  against  all  the  programming  we 
had.  We  were  slated  for  these  other  jobs. 

Carothers:  What  led  a  nice  boy  like  you  to  fall  in  with  this 
bunch  in  New  Mexico?  You  had  an  offer  for  a  reputable  job  in 
Tennessee. 

Brownlee:  Yes,  but  after  I  had  done  my  thesis  work  on  W  Ursa 
Majoris  I  had  done  a  solar  model,  a  model  of  the  sun.  I  had  worked 
it  out  for  one  moment  in  time.  Here  is  a  model  of  what  the  sun  was 
-  -  never  mind  that  it's  evolving  one  minute  every  minute.  This  is 
what  it  was,  static.  I  did  that  the  last  year,  and  I  was  very  intrigued 
by  that.  There  were  a  number  of  questions  we  couldn't  answer; 
things  we  just  didn't  know.  Los  Alamos  was  at  that  time  the  only 
place  in  the  world  that  I  knew  about  where  you  could  get  your  hands 
on  the  center  of  a  star,  and  have  a  chance  to  make  observations  on 
it.  And  one  of  the  things  they  at  Los  Alamos  wanted  to  do  was  to 
measure  the  opacity  of  materials  in  fireballs. 

Now,  that  was  exactly  the  kind  of  information  I  needed  for 
models  of  the  sun,  or  for  stars  in  general.  It  seemed  a  great  oddity, 
even  to  me  -  -  of  course,  I  was  influenced  by  my  father  -  -  that 
somebody  would  pay  me  to  do  an  experiment  on  a  fireball  which 
gave  me  exactly  the  information  I  needed  for  stars,  which  were 
hopelessly  out  of  reach.  So,  it  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  very  clever 


623 


thing  to  trick  them  into  paying  me  to  help  do  experiments  in 
fireballs.  I  didn't  tell  them  that  the  real  reason  I  was  interested  in 
fireballs  was  because  I  wanted  to  understand  something  about 
opacities  -  -  which  of  course  they  didn't  know  anything  about  -  - 
because  I  was  interested  in  stars,  and  wasn't  really  interested  in 
bombs. 

Carothers:  And  you  didn't  realize  they  were  tricking  you  into 
studying  opacities,  which  they  needed  to  know  for  calculations 
about  their  bombs. 

Brownlee:  I  learned  very  quickly  what  they  were  doing,  but 
that  was  fine.  It  was  parallel  to  what  I  wanted  to  do.  And  so,  the 
answer  to  your  question  is,  they,  at  Los  Alamos,  were  paying  me  to 
do  something  I  could  do  nowhere  else  in  the  world;  namely,  get  my 
hands  on  a  real,  honest-to-goodness  stellar  center. 

And,  not  only  did  they  pay  me,  they  gave  me  vast  sums  of 
money  to  do  experiments.  In  1  956  we  did  the  experiment  called 
Lacrosse.  It  was  at  Enewetak,  forty  kilotons,  and  we  had  forty  lines 
of  sight,  trying  to  measure  the  opacity  of  uranium,  plus  a  lot  of  other 
things.  The  opacity  of  aluminum,  for  instance,  is  very  relevant  to 
models;  there's  lots  of  aluminum  in  the  universe.  So,  this  experi¬ 
ment  was  forty  lines  of  sight,  forty  kilotons,  forty  million  dollars.  A 
fellow  astronomer  and  I  did  that  experiment.  We  were  just  given  the 
job,  and  nobody  told  us  how  much  money  we  had.  It  was  just,  "Do 
the  experiment."  When  we  got  all  through  it  had  cost  forty  million, 
but  we  didn't  know  that. 

We  got  the  opacity  of  uranium  very  nicely,  but  the  number  laid 
around  for  some  years  until  they  finally  got  to  the  point  where  they 
could  use  the  real  number  for  the  opacity  of  uranium  as  measured 
by  experiment,  and  calculate  things  that  had  happened  to  them  in 
the  past.  We  got  the  numbers,  but  they  weren't  used  in  weapon 
design  for  years,  because  any  time  they  put  them  in  their  codes 
nothing  came  out  right.  So,  you  know  the  decision  -  -  throw  out  the 
truth.  I  want  to  say  that's  the  first  time  I  really  recognized  what 
charlatans  bomb  designers  were,  but  it's  not  true;  I  had  sensed  it 
earlier. 


624 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carter  Broyles 
SNL  -  Panel  Member 

Broyles:  I  was  born  in  Eckman,  West  Virginia.  I  was  in  the 
Army  from  1 942  to  1 945.  After  that  I  went  to  the  University  of 
Chattanooga,  got  my  BS  in  1 948,  and  went  from  there  to  Vanderbilt, 
where  I  got  my  Ph.D.  in  Physics  in  1952. 

I  came  to  Sandia  in  1 952,  in  the  Weapons  Effects  Department. 
My  first  work  with  nuclear  effects  work  was  on  Upshot-Knothole  in 
'55.  From  there  I  did  various  things,  such  as  being  the  supervisor 
of  the  Nuclear  Burst  Experiments  Division,  starting  in  1957.  1  spent 
some  time  on  high  altitude  physics  work,  and  managed  the  High 
Altitude  Physics  Department  starting  in  1967. 

When  Marshmallow  came  along  in  1962,  I  was  the  Scientific 
Director,  and  I  did  that  job,  although  they  changed  the  name  to 
Scientific  Advisor,  on  Midi  Mist  and  Hudson  Seal.  Also  on  Cypress 


625 


and  Camphor,  the  or  Sandia  shots.  In  1 972  I  became  the  Director 
of  Field  Engineering.  This  organization  was  responsible  for  conduct¬ 
ing  Sandia's  underground  nuclear  test  program,  and  was  also 
responsible  for  the  the  operation  of  the  Tonapah  Test  Range.  We 
also  supported  programs  like  oil  shale  retorting,  coal  gasification, 
and  radioactive  waste  disposal  programs. 

I  retired  from  Sandia  in  1989,  and  I  now  have  a  position  as 
grandfather,  babysitter,  and  general  handyman. 


626 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Robert  Campbell 
Los  Alamos  —  Test  Director 

I  spent  World  War  II  as  a  civilian,  and  as  a  commissioned  type 
for  the  Navy  at  the  Naval  Ordnance  Laboratory.  It  started  out  with 
mine  location  schemes,  and  ended  up  with  a  mine  testing  station  on 
the  Bay  of  Fundy,  west  of  Halifax,  it  was  a  nice  place  for  that.  It 
had  a  55  foot  tide;  you'd  go  along  in  the  aircraft  and  drop  stuff  in 
the  water  at  high  tide,  and  come  by  a  few  hours  later  with  your 
vehicle  and  drive  right  up  to  the  things  you'd  dropped. 

After  World  War  II  I  stayed  with  NOL  for  roughly  a  year,  and 
that  year  was  spent  in  closing  up  the  station.  I  was  the  officer  in 
charge  of  the  place  at  the  end.  Some  of  my  friends  had  already  made 
the  jump  to  Los  Alamos.  So,  I  learned  of  the  place,  and  I  made  an 
assumption  which  turned  out  to  be  incorrect.  I  was  chafing,  like  a 
lot  of  us  did,  with  the  rules,  regulations,  customs,  traditions,  of  the 
United  States  Navy.  And  the  black  shoe,  brown  shoe  type  of  thing. 


627 


The  AEC  had  been  formed  just  a  few  months  before,  and  I  figured 
that  never  in  my  lifetime  could  anything  starting  as  new  as  the  AEC, 
and  this  Laboratory  was  kind  of  new,  ever  get  as  hidebound, 
dogmatic,  and  bureaucratic  as  the  United  States  Navy. 

Well,  1  was  wrong.  What  1  found  out  rather  quickly  was  that 
for  most  of  the  things  that  you  go  through  in  Naval  Regs,  something 
had  happened  somewhere,  maybe  years  ago,  but  there  was  a  reason 
for  it  being  that  way.  I  very  quickly  found,  in  this  new  organization, 
that  they  didn't  have  that  history,  but  they  still  needed  rules,  so  they 
made  them  up.  And  a  lot  of  times  there  was  no  reason  for  doing 
it.  Somebody  just  thought,  "We'll  do  it  this  way."  This  place  was 
much  more  awkward  than  the  Navy. 

I  was  married  when  I  came  here,  and  my  wife  and  I  arrived  in 
Los  Alamos  on  the  3rd  of  July,  1  947.  I  guess  the  decision  had  been 
made  that  this  was  going  to  be  more  or  less  a  permanent  place  by 
the  time  we  got  here,  but  the  funds  hadn't  caught  up  with  the 
decision  yet.  We  had  to  have  a  place  to  live,  and  all  that  was 
available  were  the  wartime  four-foot  modular  -  -  because  that's  the 
way  a  sheet  of  plywood  comes  -  -  structures  of  one  sort  or  another. 
We  were  assigned  to  a  little  house  down  on  Canyon  Road.  Two  little 
bedrooms,  a  little  living  room  with  an  oil  stove  in  the  middle  of  it 
to  heat  the  place,  a  little  kitchen,  a  little  bathroom  -  -  no  tub,  just 
a  shower.  I  think,  but  I'm  not  sure,  that  building  was  about  32  feet 
square.  It  was  rather  crowded. 

I  came  here  without  a  specific,  "that's  going  to  be  your  job", 
type  of  thing.  At  the  time  it  was  awfully  hard  to  get  anybody  to  say 
they'd  come  to  Los  Alamos,  so  they  were  taking  almost  any  warm 
body  and  making  what  they  could  of  the  people  when  they  arrived. 
I  ended  up  in  a  place  called  R  Site.  These  were  people  who  were 
doing  hydrodynamic  testing,  as  it's  called  today.  I  had  the  fun  job 
of  trying  to  get  two  metal  jets  to  collide  in  front  of  a  spectroscope 
to  see  what  the  ionization  was. 

After  a  few  years  at  R  Site,  I  don't  know  whether  my  feet  got 
itching  or  I  could  see  there  wasn't  a  hell  of  a  lot  of  future  for  me, 
I  jumped.  I  got  into  the  radiochemistry  business  for  Greenhouse  in 
1951.  Someone,  and  I  think  it  was  dear  Edward  (Teller),  dropped 
an  idea  that  it  would  be  interesting  to  know  what  a  fireball  looked 
like  as  a  function  of  time,  from  the  inside.  One  of  the  games  that 


628 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


was  thought  of  was  to  make  a  vessel  which  you  would  put  out  there, 
engulf  it  in  the  fireball,  and  then  close  it  at  various  and  sundry  times. 
So,  we  were  going  to  get  grab  samples  inside  the  fireball. 

The  concept  was  to  take  a  cylinder,  hold  that  in  the  flow,  and 
on  each  end  have  some  sort  of  valve  or  gate  that  would  close  quickly, 
and  so  on.  To  do  that  we  made  ourselves  some  gate  valves  that  were 
to  operate  one  time  only.  They  were  powder  driven,  about  an  inch 
and  a  quarter  thick,  maybe  four  inches,  five  inches  wide,  in  a  body 
about  ten  inches  long.  The  gate  went  sliding  across  the  opening  and 
jammed  into  a  tapered  seat,  because  they  were  not  to  bounce. 

The  shot  was  like  ten  kilotons  on  a  three-hundred  foot  tower; 
the  collectors  were  out  about  fifty  feet,  so  they  were  engulfed  in  the 
fireball.  We  had  some  that  were  through-pipes,  set  horizontally 
about  six  feet  above  the  ground,  and  we  had  another  variety  that  was 
flush  mounted.  That  was  a  tube  closed  on  one  end,  with  a  valve  on 
top,  and  we  took  whatever  got  jammed  in.  We  had  five  of  each  kind 
on  the  event. 

We  went  in  and  got  the  things  out  very  quickly  after  the  shot, 
mucking  about  at  the  bottom  of  the  tower  a  day  or  two  after  the 
shot.  And  we  did  manage  to  get  them  out,  but  there  were  no 
samples.  They  were  clean.  The  part  of  it  we  didn't  get  right  was 
that  we  didn't  get  any  flow  through  the  damn  things.  They  had  sort 
of  a  funnel  type  opening  in  a  teardrop  shaped  casting,  but  there  was 
no  flow,  because  it  stagnated  in  the  throat  of  the  thing. 

Of  course,  we  weren't  asked  to  repeat  that  experiment.  So,  I 
jumped  out  again.  A  guy  named  John  C.  Clark  had  more  or  less 
watched  the  criteria,  and  construction  requirements,  and  every 
other  damn  thing  for  the  early  phases  of  Greenhouse.  But  Jack  was 
pulled  out  of  that  when  the  need  for  Ranger  came  along.  He  was 
given  the  problem,  essentially,  of  setting  up  the  Ranger  operation. 

Ranger  was  in  January  1951,  and  1  was  at  Enewetak,  setting  up 
the  rad-chem  samplers  when  Ranger  was  being  conducted  in  Ne¬ 
vada.  So,  I  missed  Ranger,  because  I  was  already  in  the  field  on 
Greenhouse.  Anyhow,  they  needed  some  sucker  to  start  this 
construction  business,  gather  up  the  criteria,  get  it  to  the  AkE,  get 
it  back,  get  it  approved,  and  all  that  sort  of  jazz.  So  I  took  that  over 
in  August  1951,  and  that's  how  I  got  into  what  became  the  Test 
Director  business. 


Rod  Carroll 
USGS  —  Geophysics 


629 


Carroll:  I  have  a  master's  degree  in  mining  and  a  bachelor's 
degree  in  electrical  engineering.  I  have  a  background  in  mining,  and 
1  worked  in  geophysics  in  a  private  concern  in  the  East.  And,  I 
worked  in  mining  in  Arizona. 

Carothers:  So  you're  really  a  miner? 

Carroll:  Well,  I  got  out  of  that  business  very  rapidly.  I  took 
a  look  around  and  said,  "I'm  not  a  glorified  ditch  digger."  I  prefered 
a  little  more  of  what  I  thought  were  intellectual  challenges.  Mining 
is  a  sad  profession  today.  One  of  the  country's  tragedies  today  is 
to  travel  the  old  copper  belt  from  Bisbee  up  through  Ajo,  all  the  way 
north  to  Montana,  in  Butte,  and  see  the  deterioration  of  an  industry. 
It's  much  more  devastated  than  the  steel  industry  in  this  country. 

I  thought  I  needed  a  broader  contact  with  earth  science.  I  had 
worked  in  Mississippi,  and  I  had  worked  on  the  Mississippi  River, 
and  in  the  Virgin  Islands,  and  1  worked  here  and  there,  It  was  very 
interesting  work  for  a  young  man,  but  I  suddenly  realized  I  wasn't 
getting  any  intellectual  stimulation  from  the  people  in  the  group. 

I  had  a  good  friend  in  the  Survey  who  had  been  a  professor  of 
mine  in  Missouri,  and  he  called  me  up  when  I  was  in  the  Virgin 
Islands.  He  also  called  me  at  my  home  in  New  York  when  I  came 
back,  and  asked  if  I  wished  to  join  the  Survey.  I  said  I  certainly  did. 
He  was  in,  at  that  time,  what  was  called  the  Special  Projects  Branch. 
It  was  the  initiation  of  the  Branch.  So,  I  joined  the  GS  in  1961, 
Labor  Day  of  1 96 1 .  I  got  off  the  plane  in  Denver,  and  there  was 
snow  on  the  ground. 


630 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Chuck  Dismukes 

S-Cubed  -  -  Codes  and  Calculations 

I  got  my  doctorate  from  UCLA  in  theoretical  nuclear  physics. 
Then  1  went  to  work  for  Ted  Taylor  at  General  Atomics  on 
something  called  the  Orion  project,  which  was  nuclear  space 
propulsion.  The  idea  in  Orion  was  to  expel  small  nuclear  explosions 
out  the  back,  and  use  the  expanding  gases  to  push  a  big  plate,  which 
was  coupled  to  a  spaceship  with  shock  absorbers.  It  was  designed 
to  direct  as  much  of  the  momentum  as  possible  directly  at  the  ship. 

That's  how  I  cut  my  teeth  in  learning  about  calculating 
radiation  coupled  hydrodynamics  in  two  dimensions,  and  got  famil¬ 
iar  with  the  codes,  which  are  really  the  basis  for  the  codes  we're  still 
using  in  the  underground  test  business. 


631 


I  was  working  in  related  areas  at  General  Atomics  when  S- 
Cubed  was  formed  as  a  new  company,  as  a  spin-off  from  General 
Atomics.  Actually,  I  was  one  of  the  founders,  although  that's 
probably  an  exaggeration  of  my  role  in  the  whole  thing.  I  joined 
them  in  1 967,  about  five  months  after  they  were  officially  formed. 


632 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Russ  Duff 

S-Cubed  -  -  Panel  Member 

1  went  to  the  University  of  Michigan.  I  was  fortunate  enoug  . 
as  things  turned  out,  to  have  been  chosen  for  the  Navy's  V-12 
program  in  1 944,  and  assigned  to  the  University  of  Michigan  as  part 
of  an  officer  training  program.  My  military  "training"  started  at  the 
University  of  Michigan  on  ]uly  1  st,  1944.  I  was  a  V- 1 2  for  a  year, 
then  I  transferred  to  NROTC,  and  1  graduated  in  '47  with  an 
undergraduate  degree  in  engineering  physics,  and  that  was  the 
extent  of  my  Navy  training  and  military  service.  In  1 947  the  Navy 
was  busily  demobilizing,  and  what  they  did  not  need  most  was  a 
green  ensign  going  to  the  fleet.  So,  they  asked  if  I  would  please 
accept  assignment  to  the  reserves.  I  graciously  accepted  their  offer, 
and  went  back  to  school  in  September. 


633 


I  arranged  to  do  a  thesis  in  solid  state  physics.  By  this  time  I 
had  married,  and  we  had  one  child,  with  another  on  the  way.  There 
was  the  small  matter  of  beans  for  the  table.  I  had  the  G1  BII,  ninety 
dollars  a  month,  but  it  was  not  enough  to  support  a  family.  There 
was  an  opportunity  to  work  in  the  shock-tube  laboratory  for  Otto 
LaPorte.  He  was  a  German  physicist  who  had  been  involved  in 
solving  the  mystery  of  the  iron  spectrum  -  -  the  LaPorte  selection 
rules.  It  turned  out  that  not  only  could  I  work  on  shock  tubes  and 
get  paid  for  it,  but  he  was  also  perfectly  happy  for  me  to  do  thesis 
work  there.  So,  due  to  a  pure  accident  of  economics,  I  became  a 
hydrodynamicist,  sort  of,  instead  of  a  solid  state  physicist.  Every¬ 
thing  seems  to  come  from  these  minor  beginnings. 

My  thesis  subject  was  the  use  of  real  gases  in  a  shock  tube.  All 
early  shock  tube  work  was  basically  with  air,  or  an  ideal  gas.  I  began 
to  look  at  the  possibility  of  using  gases  with  different  indices  of 
refractions,  and  specific  heat  ratios.  These  things  have  been 
investigated  much  more  carefully  in  the  years  since,  but  we  had  very 
limited  instrumentation  at  that  time.  This  was  the  dark  ages  -  -  the 
earth  hadn't  yet  quite  cooled. 

Carothers:  Well,  it  had  cooled,  but  the  dinosaurs  had  not  yet 
appeared,  except  in  some  Departments  where  they  had  a  few 
dinosaur-like  professors. 

Exactly.  I  finished  my  thesis  in  early '5 1 .  I  applied  to  three 
places,  and  I  had  three  job  offers.  They  were  Sandia,  in  Albuquer¬ 
que,  Armor  Research  Foundation,  in  Chicago,  and  Los  Alamos.  The 
Sandia  folks  paid  the  most,  and  Los  Alamos  paid  the  least.  I  went 
to  Los  Alamos,  because  Los  Alamos  had  attracted  a  large  fraction 
of  the  graduating  class  from  Michigan  for  several  years.  It  was  an 
interesting  place  to  go,  there  were  interesting  things  to  do,  and  I 
wanted  to  do  them. 

For  the  first  five  years  at  Los  Alamos  I  was  assigned  to  the  GMX 
division  office,  with  the  interesting  title  of  Research  Coordinator. 
That  was  a  job  that  had  no  authority  and  no  responsibility,  but  it 
paid,  and  it  was  fun.  My  job  was  to  try  to  help  the  various 
researchers  who  were  scattered  throughout  the  groups  of  the 
division,  and  to  suggest  things  that  they  might  do  that  would  be  a 
little  more  relevant  to  the  Laboratory  mission  than  what  they  were 
doing. 


634 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


This  assignment  as  Research  Coordinator  went  on  for  about 
five  years,  and  I  began  to  suggest  the  desirability  of  a  little  more 
order  in  the  research  activity  of  the  division.  In  response  they 
suggested  I  move  to  GMX  7,  and  put  together  a  small  section  doing 
shock  tube  and  gas  detonation  research.  I  did,  and  so  we  had  a 
group  of  six  to  ten  people  working  there  doing  truly  fundamental 
research  on  shock  and  detonation  physics. 

We  had  all  of  the  support  of  a  major  Laboratory,  had  the 
freedom  to  do  anything  we  wanted  to  do,  but  the  Laboratory  really 
didn't  care  whether  we  did  it  or  we  didn't.  What  we  were  doing  was 
actually  irrelevant  to  the  Laboratory's  work,  but  they  were  willing 
to  support  us.  I  came  to  realize  that  if  my  whole  group  ceased  to 
exist,  fell  off  the  face  of  the  earth,  or  whatever,  nobody  in  the 
Laboratory  would  know  or  care  until  the  following  Friday  when  the 
secretary  called  to  ask  what  to  put  on  the  time  cards. 

In  about  19611  had  an  opportunity  to  go  to  Washington  and 
spend  a  year  on  a  sabbatical  with  the  Institute  for  Defense  Analysis. 
I  took  that  opportunity,  and  was  concerned  with  the  early  stages  of 
the  arming  of  the  South  Vietnamese.  And  also  with  aspects  of  the 
Defender  program,  which  was  an  ABM  system.  And  also  with  some 
problems  associated  with  very  large  yield  explosions.  The  Russians 
had  recently  fired  a  60  or  70  megaton  device.  It  was  an  interesting 
year. 

I  came  back  to  Los  Alamos  in  '62  with  some  hope  that  there 
would  have  been  some  reconsideration.  There  hadn't.  Johnny 
Foster,  at  Livermore,  made  a  pitch  to  me.  Why  didn't  I  come  there 
and  set  up  an  equation  of  state  group  in  the  Physics  Department, 
working  with  Ted  Merkle?  Johnny  can  be  a  very  persuasive  salesman 
when  he  wants  to  be,  and  I  was  sold. 

I  remember  that  he  made  an  interesting  comment  to  me.  Fie 
said,  "You  know,  Los  Alamos  can  beat  Livermore  at  anything  it 
wants  to  do,  anytime  itwants  to  do  it.  But  it  neverwiil,  because  they 
cannot  marshal  their  resources.  They  will  not  put  them  together, 
they  will  not  overcome  their  internal  inertia,  to  do  that."  That  was 
something  that  struck  a  responsive  cord  in  me,  because  I  had  been 
frustrated  by  the  inefficient  use  of  resources  at  LASL. 

So,  I  came  to  Livermore,  working  for  Ted  Merkle.  Ted  died 
shortly  thereafter,  and  my  activities  were  taken  up  in  the  Physics 
Department  with  a  thing  called  S  Division,  under  Teller.  Our  job  in 


635 


S  was  to  look  at  theoretical  and  experimental  equation  of  state 
problems.  We  did  a  fair  bit  of  work  which  was  in  direct  support  of 
the  Laboratory,  and  maintained  a  pretty  active  research  activity 
also. 

We  also  did  some  diagnostic  work  in  the  field,  and  I  was 
impressed,  and  I  said  so  at  the  time,  by  how  little  the  diagnostic 
people  knew  about  things  other  than  what  they  were  immediately 
concerned  with.  They  didn't  seem  to  care,  and  that  was  always  a 
frustration  and  an  annoyance  to  me. 

Well,  after  five  years  I  again  got  the  itch.  I  said,  "Look,  I  came 
here  to  do  a  particular  job.  That  job  seems  to  be  going  very  well. 
Okay,  now  what?  What's  the  next  challenge?"  They  said,  "Hey, 
you're  doing  real  well.  We  really  like  what  you're  doing.  Keep  it 
up."  The  same  words  I  had  heard  at  Los  Alamos. 

Then  Mac  Walsh,  who  had  been  a  friend  and  an  associate  at  Los 
Alamos,  called  me  from  General  Atomics  and  said,  "We  are  setting 
up  a  new  company.  It's  called  Systems,  Science,  and  Software,  and 
we  sure  would  like  you  to  think  about  joining  us."  So,  I  came  down 
and  met  with  Mac,  and  Bert  Freeman,  and  a  number  of  other  people 
that  I'd  known  for  a  number  of  years,  and  was  intrigued.  It  turns 
out  I  was  the  first  employee  of  S-Cubed  who  didn't  come  from 
General  Atomics. 


636 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Paul  Fenske 

Desert  Research  Institute  -  -  Panel  Member 

I  was  born  in  Ellenburger,  Washington,  May  15,  1925.  My 
family  left  there  when  I  was  four,  and  moved  to  Milwaukee, 
Wisconsin,  where  I  attended  grade  school.  We  then  moved  to 
Albert,  South  Dakota,  where  I  attended  high  school.  Then  I  got 
drafted.  I  was  eighteen  the  May  before  1  graduated  in  1943,  and 
in  a  small  town  like  that  there  were  not  many  guys  who  were  free, 
because  a  lot  of  the  young  people  had  farm  labor  deferments.  So, 
I  got  out  of  high  school,  I  knew  the  draft  board  was  looming  over 
my  shoulder,  and  I  didn't  know  what  to  do. 

I  was  kind  of  wandering  around  not  doing  anything,  and  my 
mother,  who  was  a  tough  lady  said,  "Well,  you  know,  the  School  of 
Mines  starts  in  two  weeks,  down  in  Rapid  City.  Why  don't  you  go 
down  there  for  the  summer?"  And  so,  the  next  thing  I  knew  she  put 
me  in  the  car,  with  my  little  suitcase  in  my  hand,  and  drove  me  to 
Selby,  which  was  the  county  seat.  That  was  also  on  the  road  which 
connected  Bismark  and  Pierre  —  Pierre  being  the  capitol  of  South 
Dakota  and  Bismark  being  the  capitol  of  North  Dakota.  There  was 
a  bus  there,  called  the  Jackrabbit  Line,  which  ran  down  to  Pierre 
over  this  washboard  gravel  road.  I  got  down  to  Pierre,  and  I  had  to 
wait  until  two  or  three  in  the  morning  for  the  Chicago  Northwestern 
train  to  come  through  Pierre.  I  took  that  to  Rapid  City,  took  my 
little  suitcase,  walked  to  the  School  of  Mines,  got  registered,  found 
a  place  to  stay,  and  there  I  was.  It  was  the  first  time  I  had  been  away 
from  home.  But  you  know  —  if  you  can't  swim,  throw  you  in  the 
water,  and  you  learn  how.  I  registered  there  as  a  physics  major,  and 
I  got  drafted  out  of  there  into  the  ASTP  program.  I  first  got  sent 
down  to  Fort  Benning,  Georgia,  which  we  used  to  call  the  Benning 
School  for  Boys. 

Carothers:  I  went  through  the  parachute  school  at  Fort 
Benning,  and  I  sure  didn't  think  that  was  a  school  for  boys. 

Fenske:  Well,  the  ASTP  program  was  different.  It  was  fairly 
rigorous  infantry  draining.  One  of  the  reasons  for  it  was  that  we  had 
a  bunch  of  non-coms  who  weren't  going  to  school,  and  they  thought 
this  was  a  good  time  to  take  it  out  on  all  these  college  guys.  We  were 
there  about  three  months,  and  then  the  Army  abandoned  the  ASTP 
program.  So,  what  to  do  with  these  guys?  Well,  they  were  in  the 


637 


infantry  school,  so  put  them  on  a  train  and  ship  them  out  to  the 
infantry.  And  so  I  was  in  the  infantry  in  Camp  Van  Doren, 
Mississippi,  which  was  the  hell-hole  of  the  South. 

Carothers:  Paul,  that's  what  everybody  says  about  wherever 
they  were. 

Fenske:  Yeah?  Weil,  that's  because  they  weren't  at  Camp  Van 
Doren.  Camp  Van  Doren  was  it.  I  had  some  difficulty  there  where 
1  had  to  go  to  the  hospital.  While  1  was  in  the  hospital  they  shipped 
my  outfit,  the  63rd  Infantry  Division,  over  to  Germany.  When  I  got 
out  of  the  hospital  I  went  to  the  Corps  of  Engineers,  where  I  became 
a  construction  equipment  mechanic.  From  there  they  sent  me  to 
the  Mariannas  Islands,  where  I  fixed  bulldozers  and  things  like  that. 
When  I  was  growing  up  in  Wisconsin  and  South  Dakota  I  never 
realized  that  you  didn't  have  to  be  cold  in  the  winter.  So,  I  was  on 
Guam,  and  Saipan,  and  then  i  had  enough  points  to  come  home  in 
'46. 


I  went  back  to  school,  and  ultimately  graduated  with  a  degree 
in  Geological  Engineering,  i  got  out  of  school  in  1 950,  and  so  did 
everybody  else.  The  job  market  for  engineers  was  not  good;  there 
weren't  really  any  positions  available.  I  had  some  feelers  from  some 
iron  mining  companies,  but  I  didn't  know  about  the  iron  mining 
business.  I  had  some  more  GI  bill  left,  and  I  had  a  brother-in-law 
who  was  going  to  the  University  of  Michigan.  So,  I  went  to  visit  my 
sister,  who  was  in  Ann  Arbor.  I  thought  it  was  a  pretty  neat  place, 
so  I  decided  to  go  back  to  school,  to  the  University  of  Michigan. 

I  finished  a  masters  in  geology  there,  and  then  I  was  hired  by 
one  of  the  subsidiaries  of  Mobil  Oil  Company,  the  Magnolia 
Petroleum  Company.  At  the  time  I  was  hired  the  Williston  Basin  in 
North  Dakota  had  just  had  a  discovery  well  drilled,  and  so  they  sent 
me  out  to  do  exploration  there.  I  went  out  and  ran  around  the 
Badlands  of  North  Dakota  for  a  couple  of  summers.  Magnolia  really 
didn't  have  any  operation  there;  they  drilled  a  few  wildcats,  but  they 
didn't  have  any  production  up  there,  and  so  they  sort  of  bowed  out 
of  the  thing,  and  transferred  me  to  Midland,  Texas. 

There,  I  just  did  a  lot  of  well-site  geology.  I  lost  track  of  the 
number  of  wells  I  shepherded  down  to  paying  production  zones 
after  i  got  to  1  50  or  so.  From  there  I  went  to  a  small  independent 
in  1956,  and  I  worked  for  them  for  about  three  years.  Then  in 


638 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


1 959  the  oil  industry  was  going  to  pot.  You  could  import  Arab  oil, 
and  have  it  for  a  dollar  a  barrel,  delivered  on  the  dock.  To  produce 
oil  in  West  Texas  cost  us  a  minimum  of  two  and  a  half  a  barrel.  It 
looked  to  me  that  the  oil  industry  was  going  to  pot;  the  Arab  oil  was 
too  cheap. 

And  so,  I  went  back  to  school.  I  was  kind  of  planning  that 
anyway,  and  I  could  see  the  oil  industry  was  going  down,  and  it  was 
getting  to  where  it  wasn't  much  fun  anymore  either.  I  went  to  the 
University  of  Colorado  and  got  a  Ph.D.  in  Geology  there,  in  the 
summer  of  '63.  Working  for  that  small  company  I  had  done  fairly 
well,  so  I  had  enough  money  for  three  and  a  half  years  at  the 
University  of  Colorado.  Of  course,  at  the  end  of  that  time  I  was  flat 
busted. 

Then  I  borrowed  some  money,  and  went  to  Idaho  State 
University,  and  taught  there.  So,  I  was  at  Idaho  State  for  a  couple 
of  years,  and  it  just  didn't  seem  like  they  were  going  to  do  anything 
for  me,  in  the  sense  of  increasing  my  pay,  which  was  6300  dollars 
a  year. 

Carothers:  Now  Paul,  academicians  by  and  large,  are  not 
highly  paid  people,  but  they  get  the  advantages  of  the  collegial 
atmosphere,  the  inspiration  from  the  students  -  -  they  get  all  of  those 
things,  and  all  of  those  things  are  tax  free. 

Well,  Idaho  State  wasn't  all  that  great  that  way  either. 

So  then  I  went  to  Hazelton  Nuclear  Science  Corporation  in 
Palo  Alto,  in  1965,  and  I  got  associated  with  DOE  projects.  The 
company  was  Hazelton,  then  it  became  Isotopes,  then  it  became 
Teledyne  Isotopes,  and  every  time  it  changed  names  it  went  further 
down  the  drain.  But  I  had  been  associated  with  DOE  projects,  and 
at  that  time  they  had  a  panel  of  consultants.  George  Maxey  was  on 
it,  and  I  had  gotten  pretty  well  acquainted  with  Maxey  at  that  time. 
He  kept  telling  me  I  should  come  over  to  DRI.  And,  when  it  seemed 
that  Isotopes  was  running  out  of  gas,  I  just  went  ahead  and  went  over 
the  mountain.  George  Maxey  was  on  the  Panel  when  I  came  to  work 
for  DRI  in  the  latter  part  of  August,  1971,  and  shortly  after  I  was 
attending  Panel  meetings.  I  wasn't  a  member  or  alternate;  I  had  no 
official  status  with  the  Panel.  Two  or  three  months  later  I  became 
Maxey's  alternate.  Then,  in  1976,  Maxey  died,  and  I  was  made  a 
member  of  the  Panel. 


639 


Bill  Flangas 

REECO  -  -  Mining  Superintendent 

I  was  born  and  raised  in  this  state,  in  Nevada,  in  a  town  called 
Ely,  in  northern  Nevada.  I  went  to  the  Macky  School  of  Mines,  in 
Reno,  Nevada,  and  I'm  a  graduate  mining  engineer.  So,  I've  really 
stuck  to  Nevada,  except  when  I  was  in  the  service.  The  U.  S.  Navy 
doesn't  operate  in  Nevada.  My  kids  asked  me,  "What  did  you  do 
in  the  war?"  I  said,  "I  painted."  They  said,  "What  did  you  do  when 
you  weren't  painting?"  and  1  said,  "I  thought  about  painting."  I  was 
on  a  destroyer.  It  was  great  duty.  In  fact,  I  asked  for  destroyer  duty. 

Harry  Truman  deprived  me  of  my  first  invasion  when  he 
dropped  the  bomb  in  August,  1945.  My  relatively  short  naval 
career  ( 1 945-1946)  was  a  great  learning  experience,  and  I  had  the 
honor  of  participating  in  the  early  occupation  of  Japan  in  the  Fall 
of  1945. 


640 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


After  the  war,  and  after  I  got  out  of  school,  I  worked  for 
Kennecott  Copper  in  an  underground  copper  mine.  Then,  early  in 
1 958  I  got  a  couple  of  calls  suggesting  that  there  was  some  work  to 
be  done  down  here  at  the  Nevada  Test  Site.  My  name  had  come  up 
through  Mr.  Reynolds,  who  was  the  owner-manager  of  Reynolds 
Electric,  who  at  that  time  was  in  New  Mexico.  He  had  been 
hobnobbing  in  Rotary,  or  one  of  those  clubs,  with  the  people  from 
one  of  the  Kennecott  operations  in  New  Mexico.  He  mentioned 
that  he  was  looking  for  a  mining  engineer. 

It  was  through  that  trail  I  got  contacted.  I  was  asked  two  or 
three  times  to  come  down  to  the  Site  and  take  a  look  at  what  was 
going  on.  My  answer  was  that  I  didn't  want  to  get  involved  in  any 
radioactive  work.  Then  time  went  on,  and  a  couple  of  months  later 
I  got  another  call.  They  said,  "Look,  without  making  any  commit¬ 
ments,  will  you  come  down?  We're  starting  a  tunnel,  and  we  just 
wantyou  to  spend  a  couple  of  days  to  help  us  getstarted,  and  you're 
free  to  leave."  So,  I  agreed  to  come  down  and  take  a  look. 

Reynolds  was  a  construction  company,  and  they  were  trying  to 
dig  a  tunnel  with  construction  people.  Obviously  that  didn't  make 
sense.  I  walked  into  E-tunnel,  and  they  had  managed  to  dig  it  in  two 
or  three  hundred  feet.  I  don't  how  they  got  there.  When  I  walked 
in  there  it  was  just  painfully  obvious  that  they  needed  miners.  So, 
the  question  was  put  to  me,  "Do  you  know  where  there  are  some 
miners?"  Obviously  I  did.  So,  I  made  a  number  of  calls,  and  started 
rounding  up  some  miners,  and  started  putting  that  force  together. 

I  came  down  here,  to  the  Test  Site,  in  May  of  '58  when  the 
Livermore  Lab  was  digging  E-tunnei,  and  they  had  a  little  activity 
going  in  B-tunnel.  It  was  at  the  time  when  they  were  first 
considering  taking  the  program  underground.  In  the  climate  of  the 
times,  there  was  just  a  great  deal  of  anxiety  on  the  Test  Site,  even 
for  those  of  us  not  connected  with  the  nuclear  business,  over  the 
confrontation  with  the  Soviets.  It  just  became  immediately  appar¬ 
ent.  And  so,  I  agreed  to  stay  a  few  days  and  get  that  thing  started. 
And,  by  the  time  I  got  it  started  I  got  caught  up  in  the  excitement, 
and  here  I  am,  thirty-six  years  iater. 

From  myvery  first  days  I  grasped  the  national  significance  and 
felt  the  dynamics  of  the  NTS.  I  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  have 
been  a  participant  and  member  of  this  highly  skilled  and  disciplined 


641 


cadre  of  scientific,  professional,  technical,  government,  and  craft 
personnel  that  in  my  opinion  has  no  equal  anywhere  in  the  nation. 
Although  each  of  was  individually  focused  in  his  own  field  of 
responsibility  in  a  rather  complicated  organizational  structure, 
objectives  were  very  well  met.  This  mission  oriented  and  schedule 
driven,  "can-do"  teams's  outstanding  successes  were  significant 
factors  in  the  outcome  of  the  cold  war.  I  am  both  grateful  and  proud 
to  have  been  involved. 


642 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Joe  Hearst 
LLNL  -  -  Logging 

I  started  out  at  Reed  College,  and  I  chose  Reed  college  because 
it  had  a  combined  program  with  MIT.  My  father  was  a  businessman, 
and  he  wanted  me  to  take  the  MIT  course  in  business  and  engineer¬ 
ing  administration.  With  a  five  year  program  I  could  go  to  a  liberal 
arts  school  first.  Reed  was  the  only  liberal  arts  school  that  had  this 
arrangement  with  MIT,  where  you'd  get  a  degree  from  each  school, 
that  did  not  have  compulsory  chapel.  I  therefore  chose  Reed.  Hater 
learned  it  was  one  of  the  finest  liberal  arts  schools  in  the  country, 
but  that  was  not  a  consideration. 


643 


Reed  was  small;  there  were  a  thousand  people,  something  like 
that.  Then  I  went  to  MIT,  took  my  degree  in  business  and 
engineering  administration,  and  decided  I  didn't  like  it. 

From  there  I  took  a  masters  in  physics  at  Boston  University. 
When  I  finished  my  masters  it  turned  out  I  was  the  best  graduate 
student  in  their  physics  department.  The  other  guy  wasn't  quite  as 
good.  They  recommended  I  go  on  for  a  Ph.D.,  which  I  subsequently 
did,  at  Northwestern.  And  at  Northwestern,  which  had  a  mediocre 
physics  department,  I  just  barely  squeaked  through  my  qualifying 
exam.  I  did  a  thesis  in  nuclear  physics,  and  my  big  recollection  at 
Northwestern  was,  when  I  finished  my  Ph.D.  there  was  some  sort  of 
party  to  celebrate  my  degree.  And  there  was  a  recorded  message 
from  the  department  chairman,  who  couldn't  be  there.  He  said, 
"Joe,  I  want  you  to  remember  that  a  second-rate  physicist  can  be 
a  first-rate  anything  else."  And  so  here  I  am. 

I  interviewed  several  places,  and  at  that  time  the  requirements 
for  being  hired  at  the  Lab  were  a  Ph.D.  in  physics  and  vital  signs.  Be 
vertical,  breathe,  have  a  heartbeat,  and  that  was  it.  This  was  just 
after  Sputnik  in  1 959.  And  I  did  learn  that  the  size  of  the  offer  I 
got  was  inversely  proportional  to  the  amount  of  time  I  spent 
interviewing.  I  went  to  Oak  Ridge  for  two  days,  and  they  didn't  give 
me  an  offer.  I  went  to  Los  Alamos  for  one  day,  and  I  forget  what 
happened.  I  came  here  for  one  day  or  less,  and  they  offered  me 
$800  a  month.  At  Boeing,  where  I  never  went  at  all,  they  just 
phoned  me  and  offered  me  more. 

One  reason  I  came  here  was,  I  saw  this  beautiful  green  valley. 
I  also  went  to  Hanford.  At  Hanford  they  gave  me  a  series  of  slides 
of  the  area,  and  I  came  back  and  showed  them  to  my  wife.  That  was 
the  end  of  that;  she  said,  "No  !"  I  came  here  in  something  like 
December,  or  maybe  in  the  early  spring.  It  was  beautiful  and  green, 
and  I  thought  it  was  that  way  all  the  time.  Nobody  bothered  to  tell 
me.  So,  when  we  drove  out  here  and  all  the  hills  were  brown,  I 
couldn't  figure  out  what  was  going  on.  I  said,  "Well,  when  we  get 
to  the  Livermore  valley  it  will  be  beautiful." 

I  ended  up  in  B  Division,  and  I  first  worked  for  a  year  doing 
experimental  physics,  and  I  really  liked  that.  I  was  designing  ways 
of  doing  photography,  designing  ways  of  doing  pins,  things  like  that. 


644 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Then  I  was  put  into  this  bomb  design  business,  and  for  a  while 
I  designed  bombs,  and  1  found  that  pretty  boring.  Those  were  the 
days  where  you  would  make  a  bomb  design,  more  or  less  by  hand, 
and  you  would  then  do  some  code  calculations  to  see  what  the  result 
was.  Every  morning  I  would  go  in,  and  this  was  before  Cal  Comp, 
and  hand-plot  the  results  of  the  calculations.  Foster  would  come  in 
every  now  and  then  and  look  over  my  shoulder  at  some  of  the  plots, 
even  though  he  was  an  Associate  Director  then.  But  my  current 
leader  dictated  every  aspect  of  what  we  did;  the  colors  in  which  we 
plotted  the  scales,  everything.  He  was  the  one  person  I've  ever 
worked  for  at  the  Lab  whom  I  detested  working  for.  He  was  a  little 
dictator  and  I  had  no  freedom  whatever. 

I  did  write  some  codes  to  simplify  my  job  and  automate  some 
of  the  things  I  was  doing.  Writing  codes  was  fun,  and  I  enjoyed  that. 
I  came  in  one  day,  knowing  nothing  about  programming,  and  went 
to  the  guy  who  was  in  charge  of  the  programming,  and  I  said, 
"What's  this  thing  called  FORTRAN?"  He  said,  "Take  this  manual." 
I  took  the  manual  home  for  the  weekend  and  came  back  and  wrote 
a  program.  Nowadays  there  are  courses  in  this,  and  I  found  you 
could  learn  it  in  a  weekend. 

Carothers:  Well,  Joe,  just  remember,  a  second-rate  physicist 
can  be  a  first-rate  anything  else. 

Hearst:  Right.  Anyhow,  I  got  unhappy  with  bomb  design,  and 
didn't  do  very  well  at  it.  When  the  moratorium  ended  we  got  into 
a  rush,  crash  program.  Eighteen  day  turnaround  with  designs  -  - 
from  hydro  shot  to  hydro  shot  was  eighteen  days.  I  had  to  do  the 
calculations,  do  the  ramrodding,  make  sure  the  parts  were  put 
together  correctly,  all  that  sort  of  thing,  and  then  design  the  next 
one.  That  was  okay.  I  think  if  I  hadn't  been  working  for  the  guy 
I  was  working  for  I  might  have  enjoyed  it,  but  he  was  such  a  tyrant 
that  it  was  really  not  fun.  And  so  I  helped  design  another  device  for 
awhile,  then  I  went  back  to  doing  experimental  work. 

We  were  trying  to  do  a  series  of  experiments  to  look  at  the  face 
of  a  pit,  as  it  imploded,  and  trying  to  see  what  was  going  on,  in 
detail.  We  were  doing  very  fast  photography.  This  was  full  time  Site 
300  work,  and  i  enjoyed  trying  to  make  what  were  very  high  quality 
measurements,  for  the  time.  That  was  fun.  It  was  optical,  with  the 
fastest  shutters  you  could  get.  We  had  our  own  little  bunker,  and 
I  also  still  did  my  own  code  work  development,  which  I  liked. 


645 


I  liked  doing  these  experiments,  but  as  you  may  know,  I'm 
irreverent  and  like  to  tease  people.  And  one  of  the  people  I  liked 
to  tease  was  the  guy  who  became  the  division  leader.  So,  when  he 
became  B  Division  Leader,  and  I  insisted  on  staying  in  experimental 
work  rather  than  going  back  to  bomb  design,  I  was  asked  to  leave 
B  Division.  I  went  to  K  Division,  after  going  the  interview  route 
again,  doing  exactly  the  same  thing  that  I  had  been  fired  from  B 
Division  for  doing,  except  now  we  were  trying  to  develop  experi¬ 
mental  methods  to  analyze  the  effects  of  shocks  on  rocks. 


646 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Dick  Heckman 

LLNL  —  Chemical  Engineering 

My  stepfather  was  a  regular  in  the  Marine  Corps,  and  I'm  a 
Marine  brat.  There  was  the  war,  and  my  high  school  time  period  was 
during  World  War  II,  so  we  moved  around  a  lot.  I  think  I  probably 
attended  some  fourteen  high  schools.  I  spent  a  spring  semester  at 
Mount  Diablo  Union  High  School  in  1  943,  and  my  first  interaction 
with  the  Livermore  site  would  have  to  be  in  late  April  or  early  May 
in  1943.  My  stepfather  said,  "I'm  going  out  to  the  Air  Station. 
Would  you  like  to  take  the  afternoon  off?"  Well,  any  high  school 
kid  would,  so  I  came  out  to  Livermore,  to  the  Air  Station. 

I  did  my  lower  division  work  at  San  Diego  State,  with  the  idea 
of  transferring  up  to  UC  Berkeley.  I  had  a  very  fine  chemistry  prof 
at  my  high  school  in  Santa  Barbara.  Work  with  him  convinced  me 
I  wanted  to  be  a  chemical  engineer,  and  I  knew  Berkeley  had  a  good 
chem  engineering  school. 


647 


I  started  in  Berkeley  was  in  '48,  and  graduated  in  june  of 
1950.  My  principal  professors  in  the  Chem  Engineering  Depart¬ 
ment  were  Donald  Hanson  and  Ted  Vermuelen.  I  had  decided  to 
take  a  job  up  at  Hanford  to  work  in  the  200  process  area,  the  old 
Purex  plant.  When  Vermuelen  discovered  I  was  interested  in  going 
into  the  nuclear  energy  field,  he  said,  "Gee,  we've  got  some  really 
interesting  things  up  on  the  Hill."  He  made  me  an  offer,  and  so  I 
came  up  on  the  Hill,  at  Berkeley. 

I  came  to  work  in  July,  the  5th  or  6th,  in  1 950.  I  had  to  laugh 
looking  at  my  Q  clearance  number.  I  suddenly  realized  I  got  my 
clearance  before  I  reached  my  twenty-first  birthday.  So,  I've  had 
a  Q  clearance  all  of  my,  quote,  adult  life. 

I  basically  worked  under  Vermuelen,  did  my  undergraduate 
work,  and  research  project  under  him,  and  then  went  to  work  as  his 
chief  staff  guy  on  the  Lab  portion  of  the  old  Materials  Testing 
Accelerator,  the  MTA  project,  out  at  Livermore.  Standard  Oil  had 
been  approached  aboutsettingup  an  operating  company,  California 
Research  and  Development,  for  this  big  accelerator  project.  My 
first  assignment  was  to  act  as  a  liaison  between  the  Standard  Oil 
subsidiary  guys,  California  Research  and  Development  people,  and 
the  Laboratory. 

Then,  I  had  an  interesting  thing  happen.  On  the  annual 
evaluation,  Vermuelen  called  me  in  and  said,  "You've  done  good 
work,  and  should  you  wish  to  stay  here  at  the  Laboratory,  there's 
no  problem.  However,  being  an  engineer,  your  future  really  lies 
with  this  engineering  organization.  And  I've  already  called  up  your 
new  bosses  and  arranged  for  your  interview."  This  was  in  July  of 
'51. 

So,  I  quit  the  Lab,  and  transferred  over  to  CRfiZD.  I  continued 
to  finish  up  some  of  the  cyclotron  irradiation  experiments  in 
Berkeley.  Then  I  actually  came  out  to  this  site,  and  my  office  was 
in  what  was  called  Building  1  3,  the  old  administration  building.  I 
went  to  work  for  Bill  Browning,  in  the  radiation  damage  area. 

I'd  gotten  married  in  December  of  '50,  and  we  moved  to 
Livermore,  into  a  house  here,  in  December  of  '5  1 .  We  came  out 
in  August  to  look  around,  and  at  that  point  Livermore  was  still  the 
original  one  square  mile.  The  Jensen  tract  had  not  been  annexed  by 
the  city.  It  was  still  outside  of  the  city  limits,  but  they  were  in  the 
process  of  the  annexation.  Those  houses  were  more  money  than  we 
could  afford.  I  mean,  they  were  actually  asking  ten  thousand  five 


648 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


hundred  for  those  houses  over  there.  That  was  just  way  too  much 
money.  There  were  none  of  the  flat-top  duplexes  to  rent  then,  so 
we  had  our  choice  of  three  houses  in  town.  And  so  we  bought  over 
on  north  K  street,  behind  the  Eagles  Hall.  Harold  Moore  was  in  the 
process  of  building  one,  and  when  we  looked  at  the  house,  and 
agreed  to  buy  it  there  were  just  some  foundations  there.  Harold 
finished  that  house,  and  we  moved  in  December.  When  we  moved 
here  there  was  definitely  a  lot  of  open  space  in  the  town. 

On  the  MTA  project,  very  early  on  it  became  clear  that  one  of 
the  problems  in  the  target  area  would  be  radiation  damage.  And  so, 
Vermuelen  had  directed  my  career  off  towards  radiation  damage 
work.  We  went  through  a  whole  series  of  projects,  but  by  the  spring 
of  '53  it  became  very  clear  that  CRstD  was  not  going  to  make  it.  It 
was  just  scuttlebutt,  but  it  was  very  clear.  I  guess  for  me,  in  looking 
back,  the  real  time  was  when  we  realized  there  was  going  to  be  a 
confrontation  between  the  CR8ZD  group  and  E.  O.  Lawrence,  about 
who  was  really  directing  things. 

Well,  of  course,  there  was  no  question  about  that  in  Lawrence's 
mind.  The  CRstD  president,  Fred  something  —  I  forget  his  name 
—  went  off  to  Washington,  left  on  a  Monday.  He  was  going  off  to 
do  battle  at  the  AEC  headquarters,  and  so  I  called  up  some  of  my 
buddies  in  Berkeley  and  said,  "Hey,  this  is  going  on.  What  do  you 
guys  hear?"  They  laughed,  and  said,  "It's  all  settled.  E.  O.  left  for 
Washington  on  Friday,  he  came  back  Sunday,  and  it's  all  settled." 

Don  Hanson  was  getting  involved  in  a  lot  of  materials  stuff  over 
on  the  Whitney  project.  I  went  to  talk  to  him  in  May,  and  he  said, 
"Yeah,  we've  got  a  place  for  you,  so  if  you  want  to  come  over,  fine." 
Well,  I  went  to  talk  to  my  boss  in  CR&D,  and  my  boss  at  CRstD  told 
me,  "Hey,  you're  top  of  the  line.  The  company  will  fold  before  you 
go."  So,  it  was  very  interesting  when  he  called  me  in  about  a  month 
and  a  half  later  and  said,  "I've  got  some  bad  news  for  you.  I've  got 
to  lay  you  off."  So,  I  jumped  the  fence  then  and  came  to  work  for 
Don  Hanson,  here  at  the  Lab  in  September  of  '53. 

Carothers:  That  must  have  been  very  convenient.  You  didn't 
have  to  move.  You  didn't  have  to  sell  your  house.  You  just  went 
in  this  gate  instead  of  the  other  gate. 

Heckman:  It  was  more  than  just  convenient,  because  believe 
me,  the  guys  who  couldn't  find  jobs  in  the  area  were  stuck  with 
making  house  payments,  in  some  cases  for  three  or  four  years, 
because  in  a  sense  there  was  literally  nothing  out  here,  in  Livermore. 


Gary  Higgins 
LLNL  -  -  Panel  Member 


I  grew  up  on  a  farm.  I  went  to  a  one-room  school  house  in 
Hartington,  Nebraska;  Branch  Creek  District  14.  We  had  eight 
people  in  the  eighth  grade.  There  was  one  teacher.  No  janitor.  We 
hauled  our  water  from  the  farm  next  door  in  a  bucket,  and  of  course 
the  big  boys  had  to  do  that,  and  put  the  wood  in  the  furnace  and  get 
it  started  in  the  morning.  And  then  I  went  to  a  big  school,  the 
unified  high  school.  In  Hartington  there  were  about  four  hundred 
students,  and  I  think  there  were  forty  or  fifty  of  them  that  made  it 
through  senior  year.  Then,  since  I  was  only  seventeen,  and  not 
subject  to  the  draft  yet,  I  started  college. 

I  started  at  Macalester  College  in  1944.  The  war  was  on  and 
I  was  not  eighteen  yet.  My  dad,  who  had  lost  an  arm  in  the  first 
World  War,  said,  "No  way  are  you  going  to  go  in  until  you  are  old 
enough.  I'm  not  going  to  sign".  1  started  out  as  if  I  were  going  to 


650 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


attend  a  full  year,  but  when  March  of  '45  came  I  went  around  to 
all  the  profs  and  I  said,  "I'm  going  to  have  to  leave  and  go  into  the 
service  pretty  quick."  Most  of  them  said,  "Okay,  your  mid-term 
averages  are  up,  don't  worry  about  taking  the  final.  I'll  give  you  the 
grade,  so  you  just  stick  it  out  until  your  birthday,"  which  was  May 
19th,  "gets  here.  If  you  get  your  call  to  go  into  the  service, 
whenever  it  is,  I'll  give  you  a  grade  and  you  won't  get  an  incom¬ 
plete." 

I  was  discharged  in  the  late  summer  of  '46,  early  enough  to 
be  able  to  register  for  school  again  in  the  fall.  I  missed  twelve 
months  of  school.  I  graduated  in  1 949  with  majors  in  chemistry  and 
physics,  and  a  minors  in  mathematics,  German,  and  English  litera¬ 
ture,  so  I  was  not  really  anything. 

That  fall  1  entered  the  Department  of  Chemistry  at  U.  C. 
Berkeley.  1  was  awarded  a  PhD  in  June  of  '52  after  we  had 
discovered  elements  99  and  100  in  the  debris  recovered  from  the 
Ivy-Mike  nuclear  test.  I  went  directly  to  work  for  California 
Research  and  Development,  which  was  a  subsidiary  of  Standard  Oil. 
but  I  found  very  quickly  I  was  not  suited  for  work  for  Standard  Oil. 
I  terminated  in  November  1952,  and  restarted  at  the  Laboratory, 
then  UCRL,  as  a  radiochemist.  I  worked  on  nuclear  explosion 
phenomenology  from  1 958  until  1 983,  when  I  retired  from  active 
programmatic  work. 


Jack  House 

Containment  Project  Manager,  LANL 

My  family  came  to  New  Mexico  when  I  was  nine,  and  my 
parents  owned  a  ranch  over  in  the  mountains  about  twenty  miles 
west  of  Los  Alamos  from  1946  until  1968.  So,  I  essentially  grew 
up  in  the  neighborhood  here,  you  might  say. 

1  went  to  the  University  of  New  Mexico,  in  Albuquerque, 
where  I  got  a  bachelors  degree  in  geology  with  basically  a  civil 
engineering  minor.  UNM  had  set  up  a  joint  program  with  the 
Geology  and  Civil  Engineering  Departments,  and  I  took  that  pro¬ 
gram.  The  subjects  do  to  some  degree  fit  together. 

In  the  summer  of  1966  1  started  working  for  Los  Alamos,  at 
the  Nevada  Test  Site,  out  in  Jackass  Fiats,  as  part  of  the  Rover 
nuclear  rocket  engine  program.  The  group  I  worked  with  was 
designated  as  J-9,  and  we  ran  the  R  MAD  building,  where  we  did  the 


652 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


assembly  and  disassembly,  remotely,  of  the  nuclear  rocket  engines 
in  the  Rover  program.  We  lived  in  Las  Vegas,  and  rode  the  bus  92 
miles  each  way,  each  day  out  to  the  site. 

After  about  a  a  year,  not  liking  the  bus  ride  or  living  in  Las 
Vegas  very  much,  I  started  seeking  opportunities  back  in  Los 
Alamos.  An  opportunity  became  available,  and  I  relocated  to  Los 
Alamos  in  1967,  still  with  the  J-9  group,  but  doing  engineering 
things  back  here  for  the  Rover  program.  Then,  in  early  1970,  Bill 
Ogle,  who  was  then  the  ^-Division  leader,  decided  to  get  out  of  the 
Rover  program  support  activities  entirely.  So  he  disbanded  J-9,  as 
we  knew  it  then,  and  a  number  of  us  were  sent  scurrying  looking  for 
other  employment. 

I  didn't  get  reassigned,  I  had  to  go  hunt  up  another  job.  And 
so,  I  went  to  talk  to  my  old  friend  Walt  Wolff,  who  was  the  deputy 
group  leader  of  J-8,  which  did  timing  and  firing.  He  said,  "Yeah, 
I  can  use  you."  So,  in  March  of  1  970  I  went  to  work  for  J-8,  and 
became  very  well  acquainted  with  the  Nevada  Test  Site  weapons 
work,  working  with  the  timing  and  firing  folks.  I  never  actually 
heard  anything  about  containment  until  that  December  morning  in 
1970  when  Baneberry  vented. 


Billy  Hudson 

LLNL  -  -  Alternate  Panel  Member 

I  got  the  idea  that  I  wanted  to  be  a  physicist  because  I  wanted 
to  understand  things.  Why  this,  why  that?  When  I  was  just  a  little 
boy  1  asked  these  questions.  Why?  No  one  seemed  to  know  very 
many  answers.  Unfortunately,  early  in  my  career  I  realized  that 
physicists  don't  know  the  answers  either,  but  by  that  time  I  was  too 
far  along  to  turn  back. 

I  grew  up  in  Kansas,  probably  thirty  or  forty  miles  from  where 
Bob  Brownlee  grew  up.  We  lived  on  relatively  small  farms,  moving 
from  one  farm  to  another  when  I  was  in  high  school,  until  I  got  into 
college.  But  it  was  pretty  much  in  the  same  general  area  around 
Salina,  Kansas,  where  I  was  born. 


654 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carothers:  Well,  Brownlee,  as  you  know,  believes  in  old 
farmers.  He  thinks  they're  the  best  kind  of  people  you  can  have  on 
something  like  the  Panel. 

Hudson:  I  think  there's  a  reason  for  that.  On  the  farm,  as  a 
rule,  you're  too  far  from  the  hardware  store  to  run  and  get  a  part 
if  something  breaks.  So,  you  make  sure  you  have  plenty  of  baling 
wire  and  a  pair  of  pliers.  It's  amazing  what  you  can  do  with  baling 
wire  and  pliers. 

When  you  get  to  be  a  physicist,  I  think  in  many  ways  you 
continue  doing  the  same  thing.  You  don't  use  pliers  anymore,  and 
you  don't  have  the  same  kind  of  wire,  but  basically  it's  solving 
problems  the  same  way.  Maybe  that's  why  Bob  likes  the  idea  of  a 
farmer  in  containment,  because  many  of  the  problems  are  of  the 
type  which  more  closely  resemble  farm  problems  than  big-science 
problems. 

After  high  school,  I  went  to  Bethany  College,  which  is  a  small 
Lutheran  church  school.  It  turned  out  that  it  was  less  than  one  mile 
from  where  I  lived,  and  so  it  was  the  obvious  place  to  go  to  school. 
In  those  days  the  tuition  was  relatively  low,  and  I  went  to  college  for 
about  the  same  cost  as  I  went  to  high  school.  I  graduated  from  there 
in  what  seems  to  me  to  be  relatively  recent  times.  That  was  in  1958. 

I  then  went  to  Kansas  State  until  January  1  966.  I  was  basically 
a  mix  of  teaching  assistant  and  research  associate,  so  I  don't  think 
I  went  to  school  more  than  about  half  time. 

My  first  thesis  advisor  was  Bob  McFarland,  who  worked  at  the 
Livermore  in  the  summer  time,  as  part  of  the  precursor  to  the  fusion 
program.  He  came  back  to  Kansas  State  each  fall  with  such  glowing 
reports  of  how  great  it  was  out  here  at  the  Lab  that  1  think  most  of 
his  students  came  out  here.  There  were  six  or  eight  students  who 
were  in  school  at  that  time,  and  they  all  came  out  here. 

So,  I  went  to  work  for  the  Lab  in  1966,  and  we  moved  to 
Livermore.  My  clearance  came  along,  and  I  was  then  invited  to 
interview  many  people  at  the  Laboratory,  which  was  a  procedure 
that  it's  really  too  bad  had  to  go  by  the  wayside  a  number  of  years 
ago. 

Carothers:  That  was  an  interesting  process.  The  idea  was  that 
you  were  hired  to  be  a  part  of  the  physics  staff,  and  as  such  you 
would  find  an  appropriate  place  in  the  Laboratory  after  you  got  your 


655 

clearance  and  could  go  talk  to  people  in  all  the  different  areas. 
That's  very  different  from,  "We  have  this  job,  and  do  you  want  this 
job,  and  do  you  fit  this  job?" 

Hudson:  Yes.  I  talked  to  the  people  in  almost  every  type  of 
work  at  the  lab,  including  ]ohn  Nuckolls,  who  was  a  group  leader  at 
the  time.  I  was  especially  interested  in  what  he  was  doing,  and  I  went 
back  a  second  time  to  talk  to  him,  but  I  couldn't  quite  swallow  the 
idea  of  doing  experiments  on  a  computer.  I  was  just  a  little  bit  too 
much  experimentally  inclined.  That  just  didn't  seem  like  physics  to 
me.  I've  always  enjoyed  working  with  my  hands.  I  didn't  realize  it 
at  the  time,  but  it  was  always  going  to  be  somebody  else's  hands. 

I  considered  several  different  places,  but  I  homed  in  fairly 
quickly  on  the  Test  Program,  for  a  couple  of  reasons.  For  one  thing, 
it  sounded  as  though  they  were  doing  what  1  considered  bona  fide 
experimental  work.  It  was  more  similar  to  what  I  had  done  in  my 
own  little  laboratory  as  a  graduate  student.  And,  at  the  time,  they 
gave  me  the  feeling  that  they  wanted  me  more,  because  I  was 
interested  in  experimental  work,  than  some  of  the  other  areas  did. 
It  seemed  like  a  good  fit,  and  I  joined  L  Division.  I  think  in 
retrospect  it  was  the  best  choice  by  a  fair  amount. 


656 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Evan  Jenkins 

USGS  -  -  Alternate  Panel  Member 

I  went  to  the  University  of  Colorado  for  my  Bachelor's 
although  1  came  from  Nebraska.  My  grandfather  and  my  great 
uncle  were  in  the  oil  business  in  West  Virginia,  and  we  went  bad 
there  the  last  time  when  I  was  in  high  school.  The  geology  in  the 
Appalachians  is  much  more  visible  than  it  is  around  Omaha,  and  I 
think  that's  where  1  got  interested.  The  geology  around  Omaha, 
Nebraska,  is  obscure.  There's  just  a  lot  of  junk  there.  It  raises  good 
corn,  but  to  a  rock  geologist  that  geology  is  junk.  So,  I  came  out 
here  to  Colorado  where,  obviously,  there's  much  more  geology 
exposed  than  even  in  the  Appalachians.  That  was  1949. 

I  spent  four  and  a  half  years  at  the  University  of  Colorado,  then 
I  went  into  the  Army.  After  that  I  went  to  the  University  of  Texas 
for  a  master's  degree,  under  Steve  Clabaugh.  He  was,  and  is,  a 
fantastic  man.  I  graduated  in  1 959,  and  then  I  went  to  work  for  an 


657 


oil  service  company  in  Houston  for  a  year  or  so.  They  supplied 
companies  with  drilling  fluids,  and  the  technology  that  goes  along 
with  it. 

Then  Dub  Swadely,  a  good  friend  of  mine  with  whom  I  did  my 
thesis  at  the  University  of  Texas,  phoned  me  from  Kentucky.  He 
was  with  the  USGS,  and  he  said,  "Hey,  we're  hiring."  So,  I  joined 
the  USGS  in  Kentucky,  on  the  joint  mapping  project,  doing  the 
whole  state.  At  that  time,  when  we  finally  finished,  it  was  the  most 
thoroughly  geologically  mapped  state  in  the  country.  And  I  suppose 
that  still  holds,  because  of  the  money  problems  that  have  developed 
since  then. 

I  spent  five  years  there,  and  my  project  chief  in  Kentucky 
thought,  "Well,  you  better  get  around  and  meet  the  Survey  a  little 
bit."  So,  I  came  to  the  the  central  region  here  in  Denver,  and  the 
Nevada  Test  Site,  and  I  really  haven't  gotten  around  to  meet  much 
of  the  Survey  since.  So,  since  1 966  I  have  put  my  roots  down  on 
the  Test  Site. 


658 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Gerry  Johnson 
LLL  -  -  Test  Director 

I  grew  up  in  the  Northwest,  in  Washington  state,  in  the  little 
town  of  Spangle,  just  south  of  Spokane.  While  attending  high  school 
I  happened  to  be  one  of  those  troublesome  students,  but  I  was  a 
good  one.  I  had  no  trouble  with  the  courses,  and  I  had  time  to  spare, 
which  I  wasted  by  causing  other  people  problems.  But  when  I  was 
finishing  up  in  high  school  the  superintendent  said,  "Gerry,  what 
you  have  to  do  is  go  to  college.  Go  right  straight  through  and  get 
a  Ph.D.  in  physics." 

My  first  question  was,  "What  is  a  Ph.D.?"  They  didn't  teach 
physics  in  high  school  there,  but  he  knew  I  was  interested  in 
scientific  subjects.  So,  he  volunteered  one  year  to  give  me  a  lab 
course,  as  a  student  of  one,  in  physics.  We  had  a  little  laboratory, 
did  little  simple  experiments,  but  it  went  very  well.  That  was  all  the 
physics  I  had  before  leaving  high  school. 

In  1933  I  enrolled  in  the  State  Normal  School  in  Cheney, 
Washington,  and  then  entered  Pullman  as  a  junior.  In  those  days  no 


659 


one  had  any  money,  especially  me.  Many  of  us  worked  our  way 
through  by  doing  odd  jobs,  and  in  my  senior  year  I  received  a 
teaching  assistantship.  I  completed  my  undergraduate  work  in 
1 937,  and  then  they  gave  me  a  a  post-graduate  teaching  assistant- 
ship;  a  half-time  job.  I  stayed  on  two  years,  did  a  little  laboratory 
research,  and  received  a  masters  degree  in  1939. 

From  there  I  went  to  Berkeley,  and  it  was  while  I  was  doing  my 
graduate  work  the  war  broke  out.  I'd  been  guided  by  a  statistical 
mechanics  and  kinetic  theory  professor,  Paul  Anderson,  at  Pullman, 
to  work  for  Leonard  Loeb,  which  I  did.  And,  if  you  worked  for 
Leonard  Loeb,  the  story  was  that  as  a  graduate  student  you  always 
knocked  on  his  door  before  entering.  As  soon  as  the  door  opened 
you  were  advised  to  say,  "Goddamn  the  Radiation  Laboratory." 
Then  you  were  permitted  to  enter.  Loeb  had  no  association  with  the 
Lab,  and  in  fact,  he  had  developed  a  lot  of  resentment  between 
himself  and  the  Lab.  It  was  just  a  personality  problem  within  the 
Department. 

Loeb  was  involved  with  the  degaussing  of  ships,  and  he  was  a 
reserve  Commander  or  Captain,  in  the  Navy.  In  the  beginning  none 
of  us  took  the  war  seriously.  We  were  all  anti-war,  and  Over  the  Hill 
In  October,  if  anybody  were  to  try  to  draft  us.  But  when  France  fell, 
1940,  we  suddenly  realized  that  there  was  going  to  be  a  war,  and 
we  would  be  involved. 

About  that  time,  the  summer  of  1 940,  there  were  three  of  us 
under  Loeb,  who  advised  us,  "You  fellows  ought  to  take  commis¬ 
sions  in  the  Volunteer  Research  Reserve,"  which  was  a  Navy  unit. 
We  allowed  as  how  that  might  be  a  good  thing,  and  so  we  took  our 
correspondence  courses  in  Navy  regulations,  and  ordnance,  and 
gunnery,  and  they  commissioned  aii  three  of  us.  Towards  the  end 
of  1940  Professor  Loeb  went  on  active  duty,  so  there  went  my 
thesis  advisor.  Soon  after  he  reported,  Loeb  called  me  up  and  asked 
how  soon  I  could  come  on  active  duty. 

I  was  well  along  on  my  research  and  had  one  prelim  to  go,  an 
oral,  to  qualify  for  a  Ph.D.,  so  1  replied,  "I'd  like  to  take  my  last  oral 
before  coming.  I  think  I  could  be  ready  around  the  first  of  February. 
Any  time  after  that  I'll  be  prepared  to  join  you."  Well,  I  passed  that 
oral;  I  suppose  not  with  distinction,  but  I  did. 

At  that  stage  of  my  life  the  Navy  looked  like  a  great  adventure. 
We  had  a  different  feeling  at  that  time,  after  the  war  started,  but 


660 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


prior  to  the  war  we  were  no  different  than  any  other  young  people. 
I  put  my  thesis  on  the  shelf,  and  went  on  active  duty  in  late  February 
or  early  March,  1941.  I  was  assigned  to  the  Naval  Proving  Ground, 
which  is  south  of  Washington,  on  the  Potomac.  At  that  time  it  was 
essentially  a  test  range  for  experimental  and  acceptance  tests  of 
armor  and  armor  piercing  projectiles,  and  for  various  other  kinds  of 
ordnance,  like  mines.  I  became  involved  in  armor  and  armor 
penetration,  which  I  continued  for  five  years. 

Specialists,  like  myself,  in  various  technical  areas,  were  sent  to 
various  places,  and  essentially  locked  up  for  five  years.  We  missed 
the  war,  so  to  speak.  They  wouldn't  let  us  enter  combat  areas.  They 
had  the  attitude  that  they  shouldn't  expose  technical  people  to 
combat,  because  of  World  War  1  experience.  They  usually  referred 
to  Moseley  being  killed  at  Gallipoli. 

I  thought  it  was  a  mistake  at  the  time,  and  I  still  think  it  was  a 
mistake,  because  we  didn't  get  a  feel  for  the  war.  We  were  just 
there,  and  problems  would  come  in  for  us  to  work  on.  It's  not  the 
same  as  getting  associated  with  a  combat  operation  and  defining  the 
problems  yourself.  All  of  us  kept  trying  to  get  out,  at  one  time  or 
another,  to  get  involved  in  something  else,  but  they  just  wouldn't 
let  us.  And  the  work  we  were  doing  was  fairly  pedestrian  after  we 
got  the  experimental  facilities  and  programs  set  up  and  going.  After 
the  first  two  years  it  was  nothing  but  routine.  Shoot  this  bullet  at 
this  armor,  and  make  the  measurements. 

1  was  in  Washington  until  '46.  Then  I  went  back  to  Berkeley 
and  finished  my  thesis.  I  got  my  degree,  and  I  concluded,  "Now 
what  I  want  to  do  is  get  a  teaching  job  and  let  ivy  grow  ail  over  me." 

So  I  did  that.  1  heard  of  a  teaching  job  at  Pullman.  I  got  hold 
of  my  old  friend  Anderson,  my  former  professor,  and  said,  "I'm 
looking  around.  I  want  a  teaching  job."  He  said,  "Can  you  teach 
physical  metallurgy?"  I  replied,  "Of  course."  I  thought,  "I  can 
certainly  teach  the  theory  because  I've  had  physics  of  solids, 
physical  chemistry,  and  thermodynamics."  But  what  was  more  to 
the  point,  they  wanted  it  to  include  a  laboratory  course  in  which 
metallographic  specimens  were  prepared.  That  is  an  art.  I'd  never 
done  anything  like  that.  But  1  didn't  tell  them  that,  and  I  took  the 
job  and  went  to  work.  I  had  a  tough  time  polishing  and  etching 
specimens,  but  I  finally  succeeded  in  getting  some  pictures.  I  felt 
sorry  for  those  students,  but  they  were  patient  with  me. 


661 


I  really  enjoyed  teaching,  and  the  students,  and  I  was  learning. 
But  then,  after  about  two  and  a  half  years,  I  realized  that  here  I  was 
teaching  these  people,  or  trying  to,  and  I  hadn't  really  done 
anything  in  physics.  I  had  no  experience,  except  that  little  bit  of 
doing  a  thesis,  and  reading  books  and  passing  prelims  -  -  I  had  no 
substantial  research  experience.  And  I  guess  I  was  a  little  bored. 
Pullman  is  pretty  isolated  after  you've  been  any  place  else. 

So,  I  went  to  the  head  of  the  department  one  day,  and  I  said, 
"This  is  not  what  I  want  to  do.  I  don't  know  enough  to  teach.  I  want 
to  do  some  research  for  a  while."  And  I  followed  that  up  at  the 
Brookhaven  Laboratory,  where  I  finally  got  a  research  assignment  in 
1949. 

Then  the  Korean  war  broke  out,  and  I  volunteered  to  go  back 
on  active  duty  again.  1  went  to  the  Special  Weapons  Project  in 
Washington,  and  there  I  started  to  work  on  nuclear  weapons.  At  the 
end  of  that,  which  was  two  years,  I  returned  to  civilian  life  and 
joined  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission,  as  a  special  assistant  to  Tom 
Johnson,  the  Director  of  Research  of  the  Atomic  Energy  Commis¬ 
sion.  There  I  worked  on  controlled  fusion,  using  the  same  propa¬ 
ganda  lines  we  use  today.  First  you  show  a  picture  of  the  rolling 
waves  in  the  ocean  .  .  .  "Think  of  that  as  gasoline,  give  us  some 
money,  and  we'll  have  it  for  you  in  twenty  years."  So,  we  should 
have  had  it  on  line  by  1970.  We  didn't  quite  make  that. 

While  at  the  AEC,  because  I  had  the  necessary  weapons 
clearances,  I  read  the  progress  reports  of  Los  Alamos  and  Livermore, 
which  described  the  nuclear  weapons  development  programs.  I 
thought,  "Well,  maybe  one  of  those  places  would  be  an  interesting 
place  to  work."  I  concluded  that  the  Livermore  reports  were  more 
imaginative.  It  was  just  that  they  were  better  writers,  I  guess,  but 
the  way  it  came  out  to  me  it  looked  to  be  more  exciting  and  more 
interesting  work.  So  I  decided  I  wanted  to  go  Livermore. 

I  was  told  that  a  man  named  Herb  York,  whoever  he  was,  was 
running  the  Laboratory,  so  I  wrote  him  a  letter,  and  said,  "Look, 
I've  decided  I  want  to  work  for  you.  What  do  I  have  to  do,  to  do 
it?"  Not  too  much  later  I  got  a  response  from  him,  and  an  interwiew 
was  arranged.  I  didn't  know  what  they  wanted,  or  what  they  wanted 
to  know,  but  it  turned  out  that  they  finally  hired  me.  There  were 
about  four  hundred  people  at  the  Lab  then,  give  or  take  a  hundred. 
Everybody  knew  everybody. 


662 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carl  Keller 
Panel  Member 

I  was  a  reactor  physicist  by  training.  I  had  been  working  at  the 
Connecticut  Advanced  Nuclear  Engineering  Laboratory,  on  the 
Snap  50  reactor.  They  decided  to  close  that  down,  and  Pratt- 
Whitney  was  going  to  make  a  jet  engine  expert  of  me.  So  I  sent  out 
my  resume,  and  I  interviewed  at  Oak  Ridge,  Argonne,  and  Los 
Alamos.  And  I  accepted  the  lowest  offer,  which  was  from  Los 
Alamos.  It  required  that  I  take  a  job,  not  with  the  people  I 
interviewed  at  Los  Alamos  for  the  full  day,  but  with  the  people  I 
interviewed  for  maybe  a  half  an  hour  before  Bob  Brownlee  had  to 
run  off  and  catch  a  plane.  And  I  had  to  change  from  the  reactor 
physicist  business  to  the  containment  business  as  Bob  Brownlee's 
assistant.  That  was  in  1 966. 


663 


Actually,  my  first  interest  was  in  living  in  New  Mexico.  And 
I  had  decided  that  the  reactor  business  was  declining.  The  big 
companies  were  taking  over  most  of  the  reactor  research,  and  the 
government  was  doing  less  and  less.  I  had  decided  not  to  try  really 
hard  to  stay  in  reactor  physics  and  reactor  design,  and  I  took  the  job 
for  the  variety. 

The  nice  thing  about  the  reactor  physics  background  was  that 
I  had  the  nuclear  physics  I  needed.  In  the  reactor  business  I  had 
done  neutron  transport  calculations,  and  other  radiation  transport 
calculations.  So,  my  background  was  in  radiation  transport.  I  had 
not  done  any  hydrodynamics  calculations  before,  so  the  job  was 
initially  highly  instructive.  Actually,  in  the  containment  field  it  has 
always  been  that  way.  I  was  learning  more  than  I  was  doing  for  many 
years. 


664 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Joe  Kennedy 

Sandia  —  Tunnel  Closure  Mechanisms 

I  came  to  Sandia  in  1 963,  March  of  1 963.  I  had  wended  my 
way  through  graduate  school,  like  everybody  else,  I  guess,  i  worked 
for  a  time  with  the  Lockheed  Missile  and  Space  Division  in  Palo  Alto. 
They  paid  for  my  masters  degree  in  physics,  at  Berkeley.  Then  I 
went  on  to  work  for  a  Ph.D.  in  Physics  at  Lehigh  University.  I  had 
never  been  eastofthe  Mississippi  before  that.  My  training  there  was 
in  solid  state  physics,  but  I  never  practiced  solid  state  physics, 
except  for  the  first  years. 

Carothers:  Well,  Jerry,  those  tunnels  are  pretty  solid  state. 

Kennedy:  Condensed  matter  they  call  it  now.  That's  far  more 
sophisticated  than  solid  state. 


665 


I  came  directly  to  Sandia  out  of  graduate  school  in  1 963.  My 
wife  is  a  physicist  also;  we  were  graduate  students  together,  and  she 
said,  "Well,  it  will  be  a  nice  place  to  stop  for  a  year  or  so,  before 
we  get  back  to  California."  And  I  said,  "Right."  And  so  we  came 
here,  and  we  never  quite  did  get  away. 

I  came  here,  like  a  good  many  fresh  Ph.D.  students,  into 
research.  That  was  frequently  kind  of  an  entry  place  for  the  new 
Ph.D.  at  Sandia  I  came  into  a  research  group  which  did  explosive 
driven,  high  pressure  physics.  So  1  sat  and  wrote  papers  in  that  for 
about  the  first  five  or  six  years  that  I  was  here. 

Then  some  number  of  friends  of  mine  kind  of  jumped  over  into 
field  test,  full  scale  field  test,  and  it  was  kind  of  right  upstairs,  in  the 
same  building,  and  I  got  interested  in  it.  And  I  had  gotten  tired  of 
writing  papers,  and  wondering  if  anybody  ever  read  them.  Then  a 
friend  who  had  gone  to  field  test  said,  "We  actually  do  stuff."  That 
appealed  to  me  a  lot,  so  I  went  there,  and  stayed  there  the  rest  of 
my  career  here.  The  very  first  event  I  worked  on  was  called  Diesel 
Train.  It  was  a  DNA  event,  and  that  was  my  introduction  to  tunnel 
events. 


666 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Tom  Kunkle 

Los  Alamos  -  -  Panel  Member 

I  was  an  undergraduate  at  the  University  of  Arizona,  and  I 
attended  graduate  school  at  the  University  of  Hawaii.  I  chose 
Hawaii  because  I  was  an  astronomy  major,  and  at  the  time  the 
Mauna  Kea  observatory  was  being  built,  and  it  had  more  square 
inches  of  glass  on  the  summit  of  the  mountain  than  you  could  find 
anywhere  else. 

Carothers:  It  seems  a  bit  strange.  There  have  been  several 
people  at  Los  Alamos  in  the  containment  business  who  originally 
were  astonomers  or  astrophyicists.  Here  are  people  who've  been 
looking  out  at  the  infinite  heavens,  and  now  they're  looking  down 
in  the  ground. 


667 


Well,  there  are  some  elements  in  common.  In  both  cases  you 
have  to  deal  remotely  with  your  subject.  There's  very  little 
opportunity  to  learn  directly  the  effects  or  the  nature  of  what  you're 
dealing  with.  In  one  case,  the  underground  nuclear  tests  are 
inaccessible  because  of  their  extreme  depths  of  burial;  in  the  other, 
the  stars  and  other  astronomical  objects  are  inaccessible  because  of 
their  distance.  So  both  use  remote  sensing. 

In  Hawaii  I  studied  galaxies  —  the  structure  of  galaxies,  and 
especially  the  material  between  the  stars,  the  obscuring  dust  and 
gas.  My  specialty  is  dust  between  the  stars. 

Carothers:  Well,  there  you  are.  Now  I  see  the  connection  with 
the  Test  Site.  There  is  a  lot  of  dust  there.  When  did  you  finish  your 
degree? 

Well,  I  have  two  Ph.D.'s.  I  finished  one  in  1978  and  one  in 
1979.  They're  two  very  different  fields.  I  became  something  else, 
as  it  were,  nearly  out  of  necessity.  Having  arrived  in  Hawaii  to  go 
to  graduate  school  in  the  fall  of  1  973,  I  discovered  that  there  had 
been  an  election  the  preceding  year.  The  only  precinct  in  the  state 
that  voted  against  the  incumbent  governor,  Mr.  Burns,  was  the 
university  precinct.  The  university  budget  had  suffered  mightily 
since  that  1972  election,  and  there  was  no  money  for  us,  the 
graduate  students. 

That  left  six  of  us,  myself  and  five  others,  who  had  graduated 
to  go  into  astronomy,  looking  for  employment  to  keep  body  and 
soul  together.  I  started  doing  statistics  for  a  group  over  in  the 
College  of  Medicine.  That  group  was  interested  in  bubble  nucle- 
ation  in  supersaturated  liquids  and  fluids.  They  were  motivated  by 
an  interest  in  diving  medicine  —  the  decompression  problems  which 
are  believed  to  be  caused  by  the  formation  of  bubbles  in  the  tissues, 
in  the  fluids  of  the  body. 

They  were  doing  some  very  interesting  lab  experiments,  but 
they  hadn't  the  least  idea  how  to  analyze  them,  or  write  up  the 
results.  I  had  a  fairly  good  idea  how  you  might  go  about  analyzing 
and  writing  up  the  results,  and  I  found  I  could  learn  how  to  handle 
the  glassware  almost  as  good  as  the  other  medical  students.  And  so, 
within  a  year  or  two  I  was  spending  a  lot  of  time  doing  that.  It 
became  a  regular  hobby  for  me.  That  just  progressed  for  a  while, 
and  by  and  by  I  finished  with  a  Ph.D.  in  diving  medicine,  or  medical 
physics  as  it's  really  known. 


668 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


I  still  needed  a  job,  and  that  was  a  problem.  Many  of  us  -  -  many 
of  us  being  the  graduate  students  of  the  university  -  -  were  discussing 
at  the  time  about  what  will  we  be,  now  that  we're  grown-up.  There 
were,  it  seemed,  two  opportunities;  one  for  university  research,  and 
one  for  employment  in  the  government,  or  government-sponsored 
functions  and  laboratories. 

Very  few  universities  seemed  to  offer  actual  jobs.  The 
academic  posts  were  transient,  short  term,  not  very  well  paid,  and 
without  benefits.  I  considered  a  position  at  Washington  University 
in  St.  Louis,  which  would  have  been  involved  Fabre  Perot  spectros¬ 
copy  of  various  stellar  objects.  That  would  have  been  very 
interesting,  and  probably  could  have  been  slowly  developed  into  a 
more  secure  faculty-type  position,  but  it  was  short  term.  It  would 
have  been  up  to  me  to  try  to  develop  it  into  something,  and,  gee, 
it  would  have  paid  much  less  than  the  auto  workers  in  the  same  city. 
So,  it  didn't  seem  like  too  good  an  employment  opportunity. 

I  also  discussed  a  science  research  fellowship  at  the  Science 
Research  Consulate  in  Great  Britain  -  -  Edinborough,  in  this  case.  I 
very  seriously  considered  taking  that  position,  which  would  have 
offered  me  halftime  a  year  in  Hawaii  at  the  National  Infrared 
Telescope  -  -  the  British  Infrared  Telescope,  as  it  is  known  over  here 
—  and  then  the  other  halftime  in  Edinborough,  reducing  the  data. 
That  would  have  been  quite  an  acceptable  position.  I  very  seriously 
considered  that. 

But,  I  had  replied  to  an  ad  which  Eric  Jones,  who  was  then  the 
J-9  group  leader,  had  run  in  Science  magazine.  He  was  looking  for 
someone  to  work  in  weapons  effects  at  Los  Alamos.  I  replied  to 
Eric's  ad,  and  he  had  me  come  out  and  talk  to  him,  and  1  liked  the 
position  quite  a  bit.  It  involved  a  lot  of  theory  and  computations, 
and  statistical  analysis  of  data  bases.  It  was  an  interesting  subject  to 
me,  and  the  group  was  staffed  largely  with  people  I  could  get  along 
with  quite  well.  There  were  physicists,  astronomers,  geologists,  and 
people  I  had  already  grown  to  know  somewhat  at  the  University  of 
Hawaii.  And  so  I  elected  to  take  that  position. 

I  interviewed  here  in  August  of  1979,  and  accepted  the 
position  the  following  month.  I  showed  up  on  April  13,  1980,  I 
believe  it  was,  for  employment. 


Joe  Lacomb 
DNA  -  -  Panel  Member 

I  was  born  in  northern  New  York.  My  family  was  in  construc¬ 
tion,  so  we  moved  a  lot.  I  went  to  high  school  numerous  places  — 
Mesa,  Arizona;  Gold  Hill,  Oregon;  Boulder,  Montana,  and  a 
number  of  places  in  northern  New  York.  I  graduated  from  West 
Seattle. 

After  that  I  went  to  the  School  of  Mines,  at  the  University  of 
Montana.  I  was  married,  I  had  two  children,  and  I  was  number  one 
on  the  draft  list  in  ]efferson  county.  They  called  me  up  and  said, 
"Would  you  like  to  sign  up  for  your  ROTC  deferment?"  I  said, 
"That  sounds  like  a  reasonably  good  idea."  So  then  I  was  stuck 
doing  ROTC  until  I  got  a  commission.  I  got  out  of  school  in  '55, 
as  a  mining  engineer. 


670 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Then  I  was  in  the  Air  Force,  stationed  at  Alstrom,  in  Great 
Falls,  Montana,  as  a  KC97  pilot,  doing  air  refueling.  When  I  got  out 
of  the  Air  Force,  I  spent  three  years  in  business  for  myself,  operating 
a  silver  mine.  We  did  pretty  good  for  a  while,  but  the  problem  was 
that  in  the  winter  time  the  snow  is  fairly  deep,  and  getting  from  town 
to  the  mine  at  the  Continental  Divide  was  interesting  at  times.  You 
only  get  about  six  months  of  productive  time  per  year.  And,  you 
starve  the  rest  of  the  year. 

After  that  I  went  to  work  for  what  was  then  called  Porter, 
Urqhart,  McQuery,  and  O'Brien.  Porter,  Urqhart,  and  McQuery 
are  all  renowned  civil  engineers.  O'Brien  was  a  young  partner. 
They  had  the  contract  for  doing  the  site  exploration  for  the 
Minuteman.  I  started  with  them  up  around  Great  Falls,  and  we  did 
two  locations  in  North  Dakota,  then  went  to  Missouri,  and  Lubbock, 
Texas. 

Finding  the  sites  is  like  trying  to  site  one  of  our  tests,  to  a 
degree.  You  have  certain  criteria.  It  can  only  be  so  close  to  a 
school.  Believe  it  or  not,  you  can  only  be  so  close  to  a  cemetery. 
And  you  can  only  be  so  close  to  a  town.  And  there  is  certain 
topography  you  would  prefer  to  have.  You  would  like  to  try  to  get 
in  on  a  good  blacktop  road,  if  possible.  You  try  to  take  all  that  into 
account.  And  you  could  only  have  the  sites  within  five  miles  of  each 
other.  So,  you  tried  find  a  place  to  cluster  eleven  sites  -  -  ten  silos 
and  one  living  quarters.  First,  you  did  a  map  study,  and  tried  to 
locate  these  sites  in  an  area  on  the  map,  then  you  went  out  and  drove 
around  and  relocated  them  to  fit  what  you  found  in  the  field. 

Land  use  was  another  thing  you  tried  to  pay  attention  to.  You 
didn't  want  to  pick  a  site  in  the  middle  of  some  guy's  million  dollar 
orchard.  You  tried  to  pick  fields.  In  North  Dakota,  most  of  the  time 
we  were  siting  in  the  center  of  wheat  fields.  In  Oklahoma  we  were 
in  cotton  fields  all  the  time. 

After  they  were  sited  we  went  back  and  drilled  to  a  hundred 
and  thirty  feet.  We  took  undisturbed  samples  every  ten  feet,  and 
took  penetration  samples  every  alternating  ten  feet,  so  we  had 
something  every  five  feet.  We  provided  that  to  the  designers  of  the 
silos  for  their  structural  design.  Every  site  was  drilled;  any  site  that 
made  water  had  a  pump  test  run  on  it.  It  was  interesting  work. 
That's  where  I  first  got  involved  in  soils  and  foundation  work. 


671 


In  Montana  a  lot  of  the  silos  were  semi-dug.  They  were  bucket 
augured  because  most  of  that  was  soil.  When  they  got  to  where  they 
had  rock,  they  were  mined.  They  were  excavated  by  drill  blasting 
and  typical  shaft  sinking  methods.  North  Dakota  was  mostly  glacial 
fill  with  big  chunks  of  shale.  I  mean  big  boulders  -  - 1  couldn't  believe 
their  size.  Some  of  them  had  fifty  to  seventy-five  foot  dimensions. 
Of  course  you  can't  see  them.  You  just  know  that  boulder  was  there 
because  of  the  drill  pattern  you'd  put  in.  Glaciers  are  pretty  big, 
and  they  move  big  rocks. 

My  wife  had  moved  from  Montana  to  Vegas  because  my 
parents  were  here.  When  I  got  through  my  last  job  with  the  sites, 
I  was  sick  of  it.  I  was  working  seven  days  a  week,  twelve  hours  a  day, 
and  that  gets  old  after  a  while.  So  I  just  said,  "I'm  going  home,"  and 
I  came  to  Vegas.  I  was  here  a  week,  and  they  wanted  me  to  go  down 
to  Vandenburg  to  drill  some  holes  down  there.  I  went  down  there 
for  two  weeks,  which  lasted  ten,  and  came  back  here. 

The  Nevada  Testing  Labs  advertised  for  a  soils  engineer.  I  went 
down  and  applied,  got  the  job,  and  started  working  for  them.  I  was 
with  them  for  two  years. 

From  that  I  went  up  to  Reno  and  managed  a  lab  in  Reno  for 
about  a  year  and  a  half.  Then  they  were  changing  hands,  and  I 
decided  to  get  out.  So  I  was  leaving,  and  I  went  around  and  talked 
to  my  clients.  I  said,  "I'm  going  going  to  be  leaving,  and  this  is 
where  I'm  goingto  be.  Ifthere's  anything  that  I've  left  undone,  pick 
up  the  phone  and  call  me."  I  was  really  proud;  I  got  fourteen  job 
offers  in  one  day. 

I  got  offered  a  job  to  be  a  project  engineer  on  the  remodeling 
of  Harrah's  Club  up  in  Reno,  and  I  took  that.  My  goal  was  to 
become  a  project  manager  for  big  construction  jobs  like  the  Mirage 
that's  being  built  here  -  -  places  I  could  work  for  two  or  three  years 
on  a  big  program,  and  then  maybe  go  goof  off  for  a  year. 

Then  I  got  a  call  from  Ken  O'Brien  saying  he  had  the  contract 
with  what  was  then  DASA,  in  Albuquerque,  and  they  needed  a 
mining  engineer.  I  thought,  "You  know,  as  long  as  I've  been  out  of 
college,  I've  never  worked  as  a  mining  engineer.  I've  worked  in  a 
mine  for  myself,  chased  drill  rigs,  done  a  lot  of  other  things,  but  I've 
never  been  a  mining  engineer."  So  I  said,  "I'll  take  it."  I  went  to 
Albuquerque,  and  got  there  in  September  of  '65.  There  was  the 


672 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


contract,  but  they  didn't  know  what  they  wanted  us  to  do.  I  used 
to  go  berserk  -  -  I'd  go  down  the  hall,  door  to  door,  trying  to  find 
work,  something  to  do,  something  to  get  involved  in. 

Then  they  needed  a  test  group  engineer  for  an  event  called 
Double  Play,  but  Jack  Noyer  had  said  he'd  never  have  a  St@**%! 
contractor  as  a  test  group  engineer.  Then  he  changed  his  mind,  and 
said,  "Well,  have  him  go  do  it."  So  I  came  out  to  the  Test  Site  in 
mid-December  '65,  as  test  group  engineer  on  a  tunnel  test  in  Area 
16. 


Roy  Miller 

LLNL  -  -  Drilling  Superintendent 

I  have  a  BS  in  petroleum  engineering,  so  I  guess  I'm  a 
petroleum  engineer.  There's  several  different  fields  of  petroleum 
engineering,  and  I  happen  to,  for  the  most  part,  be  interested  in  the 
drilling  phase  of  it. 

1  worked  for  El  Paso  Natural  Gas  Company,  in  Farmington, 
New  Mexico,  when  I  got  out  of  college.  For  a  short  period  of  time 
I  worked  in  the  Division  Office  in  Salt  Lake  City,  in  a  pipeline 
department  dealing  with  gasoline  plants,  and  compressor  stations, 
and  pipelines,  and  that  sort  of  stuff.  I  worked  for  them  for  eight 
years  before  1  came  to  the  Test  Site.  I  couldn't  wait  to  get  back  to 
the  drilling  fields.  So,  in  1 965  I  went  to  work  for  Fenix  and  Sisson. 
I  worked  for  them  until  August,  1 966,  a  very  short  period  of  time, 
and  then  1  went  to  work  for  the  Lab. 


674 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


It  was  surprising  to  me  how  much  the  hole  drilling  on  the  Test 
Site  was  adapted  from  the  oil  fields.  The  holes  just  got  bigger  is  all; 
same  equipment,  same  people. 


Cliff  Olsen 

LLNL  -  -  Panel  Member 


I  went  to  high  school  in  Sacramento.  I'm  a  native  Californian, 
born  in  Placerville.  The  family  wandered  around  Northern  Califor¬ 
nia.  During  the  war  we  lived  in  Berkeley.  In  1945  we  moved  to 
Sacramento,  and  I  stayed  there.  I  went  to  high  school  in  Sacra¬ 
mento.  UC  Davis  was  just  down  the  street,  and  so  I  ended  up  getting 
both  my  bachelors  and  Ph.D.  at  Davis. 

My  degree  is  from  the  University  of  California,  at  Davis,  and 
I'm  a  physical  chemist.  I  worked  for  Charlie  Nash,  who  is  still  there 
as  one  of  the  gray-haired  types  now.  I  was  his  first  Ph.D.  student, 
or  his  first  Ph.D.  student  who  got  a  Ph.D..  He  had  just  gotten  out 
of  UCLA,  and  he  had  done  work  with  Bill  McMillan.  1  did  my  work 
on  exploding  wires.  You  might  ask,  "What  does  that  have  to  do  with 


676 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


chemistry?"  Ail  1  can  say  is  that  a  lot  of  people  wondered  that. 
From  that  work  I  got  a  fair  background  in  what,  at  that  time,  was 
high-speed  electronic  diagnostic  techniques. 

I  got  aimed  here  originally  because  Charlie  Nash  had  a  consult¬ 
ing  contract  here,  looking  at  exploding  wires,  and  high  speed 
switching,  and  thing  like  that.  The  obvious  connection  is  that  such 
things  have  something  to  do  with  detonators,  and  so  forth.  And  so, 
he  had  a  little  bit  of  money,  and  Io  and  behold,  starting  about  1 958, 
Livermore  funded  my  graduate  research.  They  gave  us  a  nice  high 
speed  capacitor  bank,  and  some  very  nice  oscilloscopes,  which 
would  now  be  considered  something  for  the  Smithsonian. 

So,  it  seemed  logical  to  come  down  here  and  look  around,  and 
they  said,  "Why  don't  you  apply  for  a  job?"  So  I  did,  and  they  took 
me.  I  came  to  Livermore  in  1961,  and  in  only  a  couple  of  months 
got  my  Q-clearance.  These  days  that's  absolutely  amazing. 

I  ended  up  in  N  Division  for  a  couple  of  years,  before  N 
Division  folded  up.  I  worked  for  a  while  on  samples  of  fissionable 
materials  and  other  things  that  we  put  in  the  Kukla  and  Fran 
reactors,  which  were  prompt  burst  reactors.  One  of  the  primary 
things  we  were  looking  at  was  vulnerability,  at  that  time. 

With  Kukla,  which  was  a  bare  sphere,  you  could  just  put  little 
things  in  it.  Fran  was  a  little  bigger,  and  was  cylindrical,  with  a 
cylindrical  opening  where  you  could  put  in  a  two  dimensional 
sample.  The  2-D  samples  were  a  little  more  of  challenge  for  the 
calculators.  We  would  instrument  those,  stuff  them  into  the 
reactor,  and  expose  them  to  a  radiation  burst,  which  was  primarily 
neutrons. 

Then,  in  '64,  when  N  Division  started  to  go  the  way  of  the 
dodo  bird  I  left,  and  a  guy  named  Jim  Carothers  offered  me  a  job 
in  L-Division.  And,  I  took  it.  I  started  off  as  a  reaction  history 
physicist  on  Club,  and  on  Fade  and  Links  I  did  the  reaction  history. 
Then  I  moved  on  to  project  physicist,  starting  with  Plaid,  which  was 
a  line-of-sight  shot,  but  by  the  time  Plaid  was  finally  fired  I  was  no 
longer  the  project  physicist  -  - 1  was  in  containment  by  the  time  it 
leaked. 


Paul  Orkild 

USGS  -  -  Panel  Member 


677 


I  grew  up  in  a  little  place  called  Northbrook,  Illinois,  north  of 
Chicago,  and  east,  on  the  shoreline.  I  guess  the  way  1  got  interested 
in  geology  was  that  I  just  happened  to  be  looking  at  rocks  one  day 
when  I  was  a  wee  one  and  decided  that  was  something  I'd  like  to  do. 
And,  later  I  decided  it  was  a  lot  better  than  working  on  construction, 
pouring  rocks  into  forms.  I  figured  it  was  better  to  pick  up  the  rocks 
and  describe  them. 

I  went  to  school  at  the  University  of  Illinois,  from  1  946  to 
1952.  I  was  one  of  the  lucky  ones  who  went  through  ROTC  officers 
school.  But,  after  they  ruined  my  hearing  with  a  bazooka  they 
decided  they  didn't  need  me.  One  of  the  classical  demonstrations 
for  young  officers  was  to  show  how  a  bazooka  worked,  in  the 
classroom.  The  sergeant  demonstrating  the  bazooka  held  it  up  and 
said,  "This  is  how  you  fire  it."  It  went  off,  and  it  went  out  right 
through  the  wall.  Luckily,  it  missed  everybody.  But  now  I  wear 
hearing  aids  in  both  ears,  and  the  whole  class  of  36  people  were  hard 
of  hearing  after  that,  I  think.  It  was  very  interesting,  but  I  decided 
right  then  and  there  that  was  not  the  place  for  me.  It  made  for  a 
short  career. 

I  stayed  in  school  and  finally  graduated.  After  doing  graduate 
work  in  '52,  I  finally  got  very  hungry,  and  the  USGS  had  a  very 
lucrative  offer,  so  I  went  to  work.  I  joined  the  USGS  to  work  in 
Alaska,  but  I  never  saw  Alaska.  I  ended  up  working  on  the  Colorado 
plateau  looking  for  uranium.  Those  were  the  days  when  they 
thought  all  the  uranium  was  in  the  Belgian  Congo  and  up  in  Canada, 
and  the  US  didn't  have  any. 

There  was  an  award  program  for  prospectors.  There  wasn't 
anything  like  that  for  us,  even  though  they  used  our  maps.  One  of 
our  jobs  was  to  produce  photo-geologic  maps  of  the  Colorado 
plateau,  which  we  were  doing.  The  Survey  didn't  make  any  money 
selling  those,  but  the  blueprint  companies  that  sold  them  made 
fortunes,  literally.  And  the  guys  who  bought  the  maps  and  found 
uranium,  they  made  fortunes.  They  bought  the  maps  for  seventy- 
five  cents.  It  cost  us  probably  ten  thousand  dollars  to  make  them. 


678 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


At  that  time  we  were  working  in  what  we  called  the  photo¬ 
geology  section,  in  Washington,  from  1952  to  1956.  Photo¬ 
geology  is  where  you  analyze  aerial  pictures  that  were  taken  of 
various  areas,  and  make  geologic  maps  based  on  looking  at  them, 
and  inspecting  them  with  stereoscopes,  and  so  on.  You  infer  the 
kind  of  rocks  there  are  by  looking  at  a  picture,  the  various  tones  and 
colors.  And  being  very  clever,  of  course. 

We  used  colored  photographs,  which  were  very  primitive  at 
that  time,  but  they  were  useful,  and  black  and  white  photos.  Then 
we  would  go  out  into  the  field,  and  field  check  what  we  were  looking 
at  so  we'd  have  a  data  base  to  work  from  in  identifying  the  various 
rock  units.  It  was  a  very  interesting  approach.  Many  of  the  old  time 
field  geologists  thought  it  was  heresy  that  we  could  look  at  a  photo 
and  make  a  geologic  map. 

Anyway,  in  1958  1  got  involved  the  mapping  of  the  Test  Site, 
where  they  wanted  to  do  the  west  part,  using  photo-geology 
mapping.  Then  they  formed  the  Special  Project  Branch  for  Test  Site 
work,  and  it's  still  here  today. 


Jim  Page 

LLNL  -  -  Test  Director 


My  first  exposure  to  the  Lab  was  as  a  summer  employee,  back 
in  the  summer  of  1 96 1 .  I  came  into  Mechanical  Engineering  and 
spent  three  months  working  on  projects  in  the  high  pressure 
laboratory.  Then  I  went  back  to  school  and  finished  up  my  Masters 
degree  in  1962,  at  Cornell. 

After  that  I  came  back  into  Mechanical  Engineering,  in  what 
was  then  Device  Division,  and  went  to  work  on  some  of  the  very 
early  stuff  that  was  being  done  in  weapons  control.  I  spent  a  couple 
of  years  working  there,  and  then  1  went  back  into  device  work,  and 
did  about  a  year  and  a  half  of  auxiliary  systems  work.  Then  the 
Department  decided  to  form  an  engineering  division  that  would  pull 
all  the  test  work  together,  into  something  called  NTED  —  the 
Nuclear  Test  Engineering  Division.  I  joined  that  division  the  day  it 
was  formed,  and  was  in  the  containment  group  under  Palmer  House. 


680 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


I  left  that  engineering  group  in  1 972,  when  I  took  a  one  year 
assignment  at  Oak  Ridge,  in  Y- 1 2,  in  their  engineering  organization 
back  there.  I  did  a  number  of  things  there.  I  worked  in  their  special 
orders  group,  which  was  the  group  that  deals  with  customers  like  the 
Laboratory.  I  worked  in  their  engineering  organization  for  a  while. 
It's  an  facilities  type  engineering  group  that  worries  about  the  type 
of  equipment,  and  where  they  put  it,  and  how  it  operates.  1  got  a 
good  look  at  how  the  whole  outfit  works.  There  must  have  been  a 
half  dozen  people  from  here  who  went  there  on  an  assignment  like 
that,  and  a  half  dozen  people  from  the  other  parts  of  the  complex 
who  came  here.  I  found  it  to  be  a  very  interesting  year. 

When  I  came  back  I  spent  about  seven  years  doing  device 
engineering  for  events.  Then  I  got  involved  in  the  W-79  as  the  the 
project  engineer.  It  was  in  Phase  4,  so  it  was  mostly  a  production 
engineering  job.  From  the  W-79  work  I  went  back  to  NTED  as  the 
deputy  division  leader,  and  I  spent  about  eight  years  doing  that, 
which,  of  course,  had  a  heavy  focus  on  the  engineering  that  was 
done  for  the  Test  Program. 

I  left  that  job  and  went  over  to  the  Test  Program,  working  in 
the  field  operations  activities,  doing  planning  and  some  of  the 
management  of  elements  of  the  program.  From  that  assignment  it 
just  sort  of  transitioned  into  a  Test  Director  assignment. 


681 


Dan  Patch 

Pacifica  Technology  -  -  Codes,  Calculations 

I  got  a  bachelor's  and  master's  degree  in  mechanical  engineer¬ 
ing  at  the  University  of  Minnesota.  1  started  in  '61,  and  got  done 
with  that  in  '67.  Nobody  told  me  you  got  a  master's  degree 
automatically  if  you  went  through  a  Ph.D.  program.  U  of  M  was  an 
old  timey  school,  and  they  had  a  five  year  engineering  program.  I 
got  into  a  fast  track  program  that  said  we  could  get  out  in  four  years 
if  we  would  be  good  scouts  and  promise  to  stick  around  for  a  couple 
of  more,  and  that's  kind  of  what  I  did. 

Then  I  came  to  California  to  go  to  school  at  the  University  of 
California,  San  Diego  in  the  AMES  Department,  which  was  Applied 
Mechanics  and  Engineering  Sciences.  It  had  originally  been  the 
Aerospace  Department,  but  the  aerospace  industry  went  kaphooy 
in  about  the  middle  sixties,  so  they  kept  the  same  letters,  but 
changed  the  name  of  the  department. 


682 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


1  came  to  San  Diego  because  I  wanted  to  get  out  of  the  snow, 
and  because  my  advisor  said  that  there  was  a  new  engineering  school 
out  here;  they  hadn't  graduated  a  complete  class  yet  when  I  came 
out.  I  think  they  had  been  in  operation  about  three  years.  It  was 
hard  to  tell  what  kind  of  a  reputation  they  had,  but  the  UC  system 
had  a  good  reputation,  and  they  had  some  very  fine  faculty 
members.  They  had  recruited  good  faculty,  so  I  thought,  "What  the 
heck.  I'd  really  like  to  see  what  the  West  Coast  looks  like,  and  give 
this  a  try." 

It  took  a  long  time,  but  I  got  a  Ph.D.  in  Engineering  Physics. 
That  seemed  to  be  a  broad  enough  title  to  cover  ail  sins.  It  took  five 
years,  plus  I  stayed  on  a  little  longer  as  a  post-doc  because  my 
advisor  took  his  sabbatical,  and  he  needed  somebody  to  keep  track 
of  his  grad  students.  So  I  stuck  around  for  an  extra  nine  months. 

I  knew,  through  a  number  of  strange  connections,  some  of  the 
people  who  worked  at  Science,  Systems,  and  Software.  I  had  known 
some  of  these  people  for  several  years.  It  seemed  like  a  nice  bunch 
of  people,  and  an  interesting  place  to  work.  I  thought  it  would  be 
really  nice  if  I  could  get  into  S-Cubed,  but  I  sent  resumes  out  all 
over,  to  General  Atomics,  the  Navy,  and  out  of  town  to  various 
places.  Interestingly  enough,  one  of  the  places  I  sent  my  application 
to  was  SAIC,  at  the  time.  The  two  places  were  very  comparable. 
They  spun  off  from  GA  at  about  the  same  time,  and  they  were  both 
about  the  same  size,  but  because  I  knew  the  S-Cubed  people,  and 
I  had  kind  of  an  inkling  of  what  the  corporate  culture  was  like  I 
thought  it  would  be  nice  if  I  was  offered  a  job  there.  Well,  I  was. 

I  would  guess  that  S-Cubed  was  about  a  hundred  and  fifty 
people  at  that  time.  I  interviewed  Chuck  Dismukes,  and  jerry  Kent, 
jerry  was  the  late-time  containment  guy,  and  Chuck  was  what  Chuck 
was,  and  still  is,  of  course,  jerry  offered  me  a  job,  and  I  didn't  quite 
know  what  I  was  getting  into,  but  it  sure  sounded  like  what  I  was 
looking  for.  I've  never  really  looked  back  from  there,  in  a  way.  I 
worked  for  Jerry  for  two  years,  and  then  Jerry  left  S-Cubed,  with  a 
couple  of  other  people  -  -  Bob  Bjork  and  Mike  Giddings,  and  a  little 
later  Bob  Allen.  Those  four  guys  left  and  formed  Pacifica  Technol¬ 
ogy  as  a  little  bitty  company.  After  they  had  thrashed  around  for 
a  year  or  so  they  were  in  need  of  some  help,  because  they  were  doing 
pretty  well.  Jerry  had  continued  on  with  part  of  the  containment 
work,  part  of  it.  We  really  in  some  sense  split  it  with  S-Cubed  at  the 
time. 


Ed  Peterson 

S-Cubed  -  -  Panel  Member 


I  was  born  in  northern  Wisconsin  and  have  moved  many  places 
since  then.  I  have  a  bachelor's  and  master's  degree  in  Mechanical 
Engineering  from  the  University  of  Washington.  I  worked  at  Boeing 
for  a  while  after  I  had  a  bachelor's  degree,  mostly  on  airframes. 
After  I  received  a  master's  degree  I  worked  for  Ford  Aerospace  in 
Newport  Beach,  not  a  long  time  but  a  few  years,  on  rocket  engines 
and  things  like  that.  I  interacted  with  numbers  of  people  who  had 
doctor's  degrees,  and  my  personal  view  was  that  a  Ph.D.  was  sort  of 
a  union  card  that  let  you  do  some  of  the  more  interesting  work  that 
you  get  locked  out  of  if  you  don't  have  one.  They  don't  pick  people 
to  do  work  because  they're  smart,  and  good.  The  Ph.D.  is  sort  of 
a  union  card,  and  that's  the  basic  reason  I  went  back  to  school.  It's 
sort  of  the  circumstances  of  life.  It  was  probably  worth  it.  Who 
knows,  but  it  was  interesting. 


684 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


So,  I  have  a  Ph.D.  in  Engineering  from  UC  Berkeley.  I  received 
that  in  1968.  Following  that  I  taught  at  the  University  of  Minnesota 
for  four  years.  In  the  sixties  there  weren't  enough  Ph.D.s  to  go 
around,  but  by  1970  or  '7 1  the  market  was  glutted.  For  example, 
at  the  University  of  Minnesota  we  had  lost  maybe  half  our  students, 
and  there  were  a  half  dozen  assistant  professors.  It  didn't  take  too 
much  foresight  to  see  the  writing  on  the  wall. 

I  had  worked  in  Newport  Beach,  which  is  sixty  miles  up  the 
road  from  here.  Now,  nothing  against  Minnesota  -  -  it's  very  nice, 
the  people  are  very  nice,  and  all  that,  but  it  is  not  nearly  as  warm, 
and  they  aren't  near  nice  beaches.  So,  I  was  looking  around  for 
some  place  between  the  Mexican  border  and  Newport  Beach,  and 
missed  it  by  five  miles. 

A  fellow  named  Gary  Schneyer,  whom  I  had  gone  through 
graduate  school  with,  had  by  pure  chance  found  S-Cubed.  I 
happened  to  talk  to  him,  came  here  and  interviewed.  My  bachelor's 
and  master's  degrees  are  in  Mechanical  Engineering,  but  the  Ph.D. 
is  in  Engineering.  In  going  through  Berkeley  in  the  department  I  did, 
one  takes  a  major,  which  for  me  was  fluid  mechanics,  and  two 
minors.  Mine  were  physics  and  mathematics,  so  it  wasn't  really 
disassociated  from  the  type  of  things  they  do  here.  They  made  an 
offer,  and  I  decided  to  go  to  work  here.  The  company  was  very  small 
at  that  time.  So,  I  came  here  in  1 972.  And  the  principal  reason 
was  because  it  was  San  Diego.  It  may  not  be  a  good  reason,  but  that 
was  the  reason  1  did.  The  person  who  really  hired  me  was  Chuck 
Dismukes,  and  the  people  here  were  interested  in  front  ends  at  the 
time,  and  plasma  flow  in  the  pipes.  It  was  really  a  fluid  mechanics 
type  problem  that  they  were  most  interested  in. 

There  was  another  person  here,  who  didn't  hire  me,  that  I 
ended  up  working  with  some  in  aerodynamics.  He  was  doing  truck 
aerodynamics  and  things  like  that,  and  I  had  done  some  work  in 
aerodynamics.  If  you  look  at  trucks  today,  you  will  see  these  new 
aerodynamic  trucks.  The  one  that's  put  out  by  Kenworth  now  is 
almost  identical  to  one  that  we  designed  for  Freightliner  about  ten 
years  ago.  The  new  trucks  have  the  whole  front  end,  including  the 
fenders,  the  cab  top,  and  everything  designed  as  a  complete 
aerodynamic  unit.  In  the  very  new  ones  the  aerodynamics  goes  all 
the  way  down  to  the  bumpers,  and  along  the  sides.  I  ended  up  doing 
a  reasonable  amount  of  work  on  that.  All  engineering  problems 


685 


from  many  standpoints  are  the  same.  They're  all  a  little  different, 
but  they  ail  have  a  lot  of  similarities.  The  work  on  the  trucks  was 
very  technical,  and  a  lot  of  fun. 

A  lot  of  the  people  that  are  in  containment  really  only  work  in 
one  area,  but  there  are  others  of  us  that  have  done  other  things. 


686 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


John  Rambo 

LLNL  -  -  Codes,  Calulations 

I  graduated  from  the  University  of  Portland  in  June  of  1963, 
and  a  slight  depression  was  going  on  at  that  time.  1  had  been  looking 
for  a  job  for  about  six  months  when  some  interviewers  from  the 
Nevada  Test  Site  came  to  Portland.  So  I  went  down,  and  they  were 
looking  for  some  technical  people.  I  said,  "I'm  a  physicist,  but  I 
certainly  would  be  willing  to  do  most  anything.  I  really  would  like 
a  job,  and  I'm  interested  in  working  for  the  Laboratory."  They  said 
they  were  looking  for  a  physicist,  they  just  hadn't  advertized  in  the 
newspaper.  I  continued  to  write  them  letters  that  I  was  still 
interested,  and  at  the  same  time  I  was  also  possibly  going  to  hire  on 
at  Bremerton,  with  the  Naval  shipyard. 

It  was  rather  odd.  I  had  an  interview  at  Bremerton  that  was 
really  quite  extensive.  I  was  really  put  to  the  carpet,  technically, 
and  there  were  a  great  deal  of  questions  from  the  Navy  people.  I 


687 


really  felt  uptight  during  the  whole  interview.  About  that  time  1  got 
to  go  down  to  the  Nevada  Test  Site,  for  an  interview  down  there. 
They  showed  me  around  the  Test  Site,  took  me  up  to  CP-1,  and  as 
we  were  driving  back  one  of  the  physicists,  Bill  King,  the  head  of 
Health  and  Safety,  said,  "You  know  all  about  radiation  and  that  sort 
of  thing?"  I  said,  "Yes,"  and  that  was  about  the  extent  of  the 
interview. 

I  proceeded  to  be  very  interested  in  joining  the  Laboratory  in 
Nevada,  and  I  was  hired  on  by  John  Ellis,  who  was  then  in  charge 
of  a  small  group  developing,  as  a  group,  how  to  measure  slifer  yields 
for  the  nuclear  test  program.  I  came  to  work  in  November  of  1 963. 
I  lived  in  Las  Vegas,  and  worked  at  the  Test  Site  for  five  years. 

I  came  in  as  the  physicist  who  would  analyze  the  slifer  data,  and 
then  proceed  to  write  reports  telling  people  how  the  devices  went 
in  terms  of  yield.  Things  were  quite  different  during  those  days. 
Some  of  my  first  visits  out  in  the  field  involved  looking  at  how  the 
engineering  construction  people,  Joe  Snyder  and  Dick  Hunter,  sat 
in  a  small  trailer  and  directed  the  entire  operation  from  that  trailer. 
We  were  shooting  a  shot  every  week  or  so  at  that  time.  That's 
something  that  I  doubt  we  could  do  today.  It  was  rather  phenom¬ 
enal  to  see  how  they  would  get  all  this  activity  going  just  from  that 
one  trailer.  People  would  show  up,  and  they  would  tell  them  where 
they  were  to  go.  They  were  on  the  net  a  lot  of  the  time,  and  it  was 
just  that  very  small  operation  that  was  doing  the  whole  thing. 


688 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Norton  Rimer 

S-Cubed  -  -  Codes,  Calculation 

I  got  my  undergraduate,  masters,  and  Ph.D.  degrees  at  City 
College  of  New  York.  I  started  as  a  civil  engineer,  then  obtained  a 
masters  in  hydraulics,  and  a  Ph.D.  in  plasma  physics.  From 
hydraulics  to  plasma  physics  was  a  real  switch.  Most  of  the  people 
were  doing  experimental  theses.  I  was  more  interested  in  the 
computational  aspects,  coming  from  fluid  mechanics,  where  I  was 
doing  computational  fluid  mechanics.  That  change  to  plasma 
physics  meant  taking  a  lot  of  new  courses,  a  lot  of  physics  depart¬ 
ment  courses  that  I  hadn't  taken. 

I  finally  turned  in  the  document  for  my  degree  in  1972,  and 
I  came  here,  to  S-Cubed  in  1 973.  Actually,  I  had  been  teaching  at 
the  University  since  1967.  I  was  in  no  hurry  to  get  out  of  there, 
because  I  was  interested  in  teaching.  I  loved  college  teaching,  but 
it  was  recession  time.  I  must  have  applied  to  200  universities, 


689 


including  every  one  in  Hawaii  and  Florida  -  -  I'm  a  beach  person.  1 
think  I  got  about  ten  or  fifteen  "no"  responses,  and  two  interviews, 
one  of  which  accepted  me.  That  was  a  junior  college,  and  I  wasn't 
very  interested  in  that. 

When  I  got  here  Jerry  Kent  had  just  taken  over  Russ  Duff's  late¬ 
time  containment  contract.  He  needed  help  out  here,  so  he  called 
me  up,  and  I  came  out  for  an  interview,  and  they  hired  me.  Partially 
it  was  to  work  for  him,  and  partially  to  work  on  plasma  physics.  I 
spent  about  five  years  writing  some  of  the  plasma  physics  codes  that 
they  used  then.  I  was  working  part-time  on  containment  in  those 
days.  Nine  months  after  I  was  hired  Jerry  left  and  formed  Pac  Tech. 
Four  or  five  months  before  that  he  asked  me  to  go  with  him,  but  I 
like  this  company.  I  felt  I  had  a  lot  to  learn  from  the  people  here, 
and  I  decided  to  stay. 

So,  I've  been  here  since  September  '73.  But  I'm  leaving  S- 
Cubed  as  an  employee  right  after  I  come  back  from  vacation.  I'm 
retiring,  but  I'll  be  a  consultant;  I  have  a  half-time  commitment.  So, 
I  guess  I  won't  get  my  twenty  year  watch.  I'll  stick  to  the  business 
at  least  as  long  as  the  people  I  can  work  with  stay  around.  If 
someone  strange  comes  in  that's  difficult  to  deal  with,  I  probably 
will  just  cut  out  completely. 


690 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Byron  Ristvet 
DNA  -  -  Panel  Member 

I  was  born  and  raised  in  Puget  Sound  country,  in  Tacoma, 
Washington.  Undergraduate  school  was  at  the  University  of  Puget 
Sound,  where  I  got  a  Bachelor  of  Science  in  Geology,  with  minors 
in  chemistry,  physics,  and  aerospace  studies. 

I  always  liked  rocks,  and  I  had  an  aunt  and  uncle  who  were  avid 
gemologists.  They  got  me  interested  in  it.  And  I've  always  been  an 
outdoorsy  person.  I  used  to  like  to  go  out  camping,  roughing  it,  and 
all  that.  I  still  do  it  occasionally,  but  I've  gotten  to  where  a  motel 
is  roughing  it.  In  1 969  and  1 970  I  was  a  geologist  with  the  Keivel 
Mining  Group,  which  is  Canada's  largest  Canadian-owned  mining 
firm.  I  was  an  exploration  geologist  the  first  summer,  and  an 
exploration  geology  manager  the  next  summer.  I  guess  working  a 
couple  of  summers  in  remote  northern  Canada  kind  of  gets  you  out 
of  the  camping  experience. 


691 


They  were  long  summers  and  we  made  good  money.  There  1 
was  in  Canada,  with  a  permanent  work  visa,  which  I  still  own,  and 
I  still  have  a  Canadian  social  security  card.  The  Vietnam  war  was 
raging,  and  it  was  hard  to  come  back.  I  originally  wanted  to  go  to 
the  University  of  Calgary,  since  1  was  on  an  educational  delay  from 
active  duty  in  the  Air  Force.  They  were  all  worried,  and  said,  "You 
can't  go  to  Canada.  You  might  not  come  back."  Nobody  knew  I 
already  had  a  permanent  work  visa. 

Then  I  went  to  Northwestern  University  for  graduate  school 
and  received  a  Ph.D.  in  geology,  with  the  emphasis  on  low- 
temperature  aqueous  geochemistry.  I  left  Northwestern  in  1973. 
I  was  prematurely  called  to  active  duty  by  the  Air  Force,  so  I  did  not 
have  my  thesis  even  started,  as  far  as  the  writing.  In  fact,  until  the 
day  I  left  to  drive  to  Kirtland  via  my  home  in  Tacoma,  I  was  doing 
lab  work.  That  was  about  an  eight  month  premature  extraction  from 
the  University.  I  went  to  Kirtland  to  what  was  then  the  Air  Force 
Weapons  Lab.  I  was  originally  to  go  there  to  do  environmental 
chemistry  work,  which  was  waste  water  problems.  I  got  to  Kirtland, 
and  in  a  few  days  time,  three  days  exactly  after  I  in-processed,  I  was 
on  a  plane  to  Enewetak,  where  I  got  involved  with  trying  to 
understand  the  Pacific  nuclear  craters. 

Off  and  on,  that  took  until  1  985  to  finally  resolve,  with  many, 
many  trips  and  about  seven  hundred  days  out  there.  I  think  the 
longest  trip  I  took  was  nine  to  nine  and  a  half  weeks.  I  think  we  did 
a  very  good  job  out  there,  in  understanding  that  these  craters  really 
were  small.  It  was  all  these  late-time  liquifaction  related  processes 
that  made  them  become  so  large  and  shallow. 

My  first  visit  to  the  Test  Site  was  in  1 974,  where  I  assisted  in 
emptying  ejecta  collection  pans  on  the  pre-Mine  Throw  event, 
which  was  a  hundred  and  twenty  ton  nitro-methane  shot  out  on 
Yucca  Lake.  It  was  a  cratering  shot,  and  the  ejecta  collection  pans 
were  to  collect  whatever  came  down  where  they  were. 

I  was  with  the  Air  Force  Weapons  Lab  at  that  time.  I  really  got 
in  on  the  original  Enewetak  project  when  it  was  a  DNA  funded 
project  to  look  at  all  the  explorations  of  the  craters.  I  was  also 
involved  with  DNA  on  the  Minuteman  upgrade  program,  and  the 
silo  upgrade  program,  and  a  number  of  other  programs.  We  were 
working  very  closely  with  the  shock  physics  folks,  and  to  some 
extent  the  test  folks.  The  characterization  of  the  islands  started  in 


692 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


1977,  when  I  was  still  on  active  duty,  and  I  was  involved  as  a 
technical  advisor  there.  It  was  in  1977  that  I  decided  I  really  didn't 
want  to  stay  in  the  Air  Force  on  active  duty,  but  I  continued  on  as 
a  reservist,  even  until  today. 

I  was  looking  then  for  a  job,  and  originally  I  had  planned  to  go 
to  an  oil  company,  a  research  and  development  organization.  I  had 
completed  my  Ph.D.  while  on  active  duty.  I  was  seriously  looking 
at  joining  the  Chevron  Research  Corporation,  but  a  few  things 
changed  my  mind  right  at  the  last  minute.  They  had  to  do  a  little 
bit  with  salary  and  the  cost  of  living  in  southern  California,  and  the 
fact  that  my  wife  was  pregnant,  and  she  had  a  good  job  in 
Albuquerque,  and  her  family  is  in  Albuquerque,  and  there  was  this 
geophysicist  job  open  over  at  DNA. 

So,  then  I  was  a  civilian  employee  at  DNA.  I  continued  on  as 
a  reservist  at  the  Weapons  Lab,  primarily  doing  environmental 
impact  analysis,  which  I  still  do  today.  I  started  in  October  1977, 
and  I  worked  at  DNA  as  the  geologist-geophysicist  for  six  years. 
Then  I  left  DNA  to  go  to  S-Cubed,  and  the  purpose  for  that  was  so 
I  could  be  the  technical  director  of  the  Pacific  Enewetak  Atoll  Crater 
Exploration.  That  was  finally  the  realization  of  what  we  had  wanted 
to  do,  which  was  to  drill  the  craters,  which  we  did  very,  very 
successfully. 

It  was  funny.  If  I  wanted  to  do  that,  even  though  it  was  a  DNA 
sponsored  program,  I  had  to  leave  DNA  because  my  duties  in  the 
underground  test  program  would  have  prohibited  me  from  devoting 
full  time  to  a  program  that  was  very  near  and  dear  to  my  heart  at 
the  time.  And  so  I  went  to  S-Cubed  with  the  intention  of  probably 
coming  back  to  DNA  as  a  government  employee.  I  was  at  S-Cubed 
a  little  over  five  years,  and  then  I  returned  to  DNA  in  1 988,  as  the 
chief  of  the  containment  technical  division. 


693 


Bernie  Roth 
LLNL  —  Test  Director 


I'm  a  mechanical  engineer.  I  graduated  from  San  Diego  State 
College  in  1 959,  and  stayed  in  that  general  area  for  five  or  six  years. 
I  came  out  of  the  aerospace  industry,  where  I  had  spent  eight  years 
at  several  different  jobs  for  several  different  aerospace  companies. 
I  had  three  jobs  in  San  Diego,  and  then  one  in  Connecticut.  I  worked 
on  the  Atlas  program  in  San  Diego  for  General  Dynamics,  in  the 
astronautics  division.  I  had  two  different  jobs  there.  I  also  had  a 
job  at  Ryan  Aeronautical  for  a  short  period  of  time  in  San  Diego. 
That  was  in  anticipation  of  a  contract  that  never  developed.  The 
custom  of  the  time,  and  maybe  is  still,  is  that  there  is  feast  and 
famine.  You're  hired  and  fired  at  will  in  the  aerospace  industry. 
Then  my  last  aerospace  job  was  with  United  Aircraft  in  the  Hamilton 
Standard  Division  in  Windsor  Locks,  Connecticut. 


694 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


After  those  seven  or  eight  years  in  aerospace  I  decided  that  it 
was  too  transient  a  life,  and  I  wanted  to  look  for  something  a  little 
more  secure.  The  other  part  of  that  story  was  that  I  didn't  want  to 
live  on  the  East  Coast.  I  had  been  there  for  a  couple  of  years,  and 
decided  that  I'd  like  to  go  back  to  the  West  Coast. 

And  so,  how  did  I  get  here?  One  September  or  October 
weekend  there  was  an  advertisement  in  the  local  paper  that  the 
Livermore  Laboratory  in  Livermore,  California  was  interviewing  for 
all  sorts  of  people.  I  had  already  decided  that  I  was  going  to  leave 
United  Aircraft,  and  had  talked  to  people  like  Lockheed  and  so  on. 
So  I  thought,  "Gee,  What  is  this  outfit?"  And  I  decided  I  would  go 
down  and  at  least  talk  to  them. 

So,  I  proceeded  with  the  interview  process,  and  was  invited  out 
for  an  interview  at  Livermore.  That  progressed  through  the  various 
administrative  requirements  to  a  job  that  I  started,  I  believe,  on  the 
20th  of  June,  in  1 967.  I  got  hired  into  what  at  that  time  was  the 
Nuclear  Test  Engineering  Division. 

I  was  almost  immediately  assigned  to  an  event  called  Hupmo- 
bile.  All  this  was  new  to  me,  and  I  didn't  know  what  to  expect.  I 
think  it  was  six  or  seven  months  before  that  event  was  fired.  At  the 
time  I  was  very  new  to  the  Laboratory,  and  that  was  my  first  test. 
I  didn't  realize  how  complicated  that  shot  was  at  the  time.  I  just 
thought  they  did  that  all  the  time.  Then  I  just  went  on  from  there 
to  one  event  after  another,  in  the  capacity  of  what  was  then  called, 
and  is  presently  called,  the  diagnostic  engineer. 

Things  just  progressed  from  there.  I  spent  probably  four  or  five 
years  as  a  diagnostic  engineer,  and  then  a  position  became  available 
in  the  readiness  group.  That  program  ended  about  two  years  after 
I  became  associated  with  it. 

I  jumped  from  there  to  the  laser  program  for  a  couple  of  years. 
But,  I  guess  the  Test  Program  had  become  ingrained  enough  in  my 
interests  that  I  decided  I  liked  it  better  back  in  the  Test  Program. 
And  so,  I  came  back  into  the  diagnostic  group,  and  took  a  position 
as  a  group  leader,  which  happened  to  be  available.  We  fielded  a 
number  of  events,  I  advanced  to  section  leader  of  the  entire 
diagnostics  section  in  NTED.  I  went  from  there  to  become  a  device 
systems  engineer,  which  job  I  had  for  seven  or  eight  years,  and  then 
became  a  Test  Director,  which  is  what  I  am  now. 


Tom  Scolman 
LANL  -  -  Test  Director 

I  came  direct  to  Los  Alamos  in  1 956,  after  getting  a  Ph.D.  in 
experimental  physics  at  the  University  of  Minnesota.  I  came  to  Los 
Alamos  for  several  reasons.  One,  I  had  several  friends  I  had  been 
with  in  graduate  school  who  had  come  to  Los  Alamos,  and  they  were 
very  high  on  Los  Alamos,  not  only  as  a  place  to  work  but  as  a  place 
to  live.  I'm  a  small  town  boy.  I  wasn't  particularly  anxious  to  go 
to  a  large  city,  and  so  I  found  Los  Alamos  very  appealing,  and  the 
work  was  challenging  and  interesting. 

When  I  came  to  work  I  went  to  work  for  the  weapons  division, 
which  in  those  days  was  responsible  for  the  engineering  design  and 
production  of  weapons,  both  for  stockpile  and  for  testing.  I  worked 
with  a  group  that  was  largely  responsible  for  interfacing  between 
designers  and  engineers,  and  my  involvement  with  Test  was  through 
the  fact  that  this  particular  group  had  the  responsibility  of  monitor- 


696 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


ing  and  certifying  the  gas  handling  for  test  devices.  With  this  I  was 
involved  with  the  Hardtack  operations,  both  in  the  Pacific  and  later 
when  we  came  back  to  Nevada,  although  I  was  not  part  of  the  test 
organization,  per  se. 

It  wasn't  a  bad  life,  out  in  the  Pacific,  if  you  didn't  mind  being 
away  from  where  you  lived  for  a  while.  That  certainly  was  the  most 
negative  side  of  it.  I  think  in  many  ways  it  was  harder  on  the  families 
back  here  than  it  was  on  the  participants  in  the  field.  It  turns  out 
the  group  I  was  in  was  not  engaged  in  the  construction  in  the  field, 
so  as  a  result  we  did  not  have  to  go  out  and  spend  six  months  in  the 
field  for  every  operation,  as  much  of]  Division,  the  test  division,  did 
in  those  days.  For  example,  on  Hardtack  Phase  I,  if  I  remember 
right,  I  spent  probably  not  more  than  like  six  weeks  at  Enewetak. 

We  did,  as  some  people  remember,  then  come  back  and  do 
Hardtack  Phase  II,  which  was  very  different.  I  remember  one  time 
where  we  were  out  arming  a  device,  preparing  it  to  go  up  on  a 
balloon  so  it  could  be  fired  at  dawn.  While  we  were  out  arming, 
three  shots  were  fired  within  probably  five  miles  of  where  we  were. 

Carothers:  I've  talked  with  people  at  Livermore,  and  the  things 
they  have  said  about  that  operation  are  hard  to  believe  these  days. 
Bob  Petrie  said  that  they  once  went  out,  got  the  carpenter  foreman, 
and  said,  "We  want  a  tower.  How  high  can  you  make  it  by  tomorrow 
night?  Can  you  make  it  about  this  high,  and  about  that  wide?  And, 
we'll  need  some  steps."  And  Walt  Arnold  told  me,  "I  remember 
carrying  a  device  up  those  stairs."  I  said,  "Aw,  come  on."  Do  you 
believe  that,  Tom? 

Scolman:  Yes  I  do.  I  never  carried  a  device  up  the  stairs,  but 
1  did  carry  one  on  my  lap,  in  the  backseat  of  a  sedan,  out  to  the  zero 
point. 

It  must  have  been  the  fall  of  '62  that  I  got  into  ]  Division.  I 
had  become  closely  acquainted  with  Bob  Campbell  during  our 
involvement  in  the  operations,  and  I  said,  "Is  there  anything  in  ] 
Division  that  might  be  interesting?"  He  suggested  that  I  look  at  their 
timing  and  firing  group,  which  was  ]-8.  it  wasn't  really  in  line  with 
my  background,  but  it  was  sufficiently  interesting,  and  had  some 
involvement  with  the  field  activity.  I  enjoyed  the  testing  business. 
I  like  to  go  out  and  do  things,  and  the  test  people  do  things. 


697 


I  worked  in  the  timing  and  firing  organization  until  about  '65 
or  '66.  Then  we  started  branching  out,  doing  things  other  than  tests 
at  the  Nevada  Test  Site.  We  got  involved  with  some  of  the 
Plowshare  operations.  We  got  involved  with  the  first  shots  on 
Amchitka,  and  then  there  was  a  need  for  another  Test  Director. 
Initially,  Bill  Ogle  asked  me  to  come  to  the  division  office  and  work 
with  Bob  Campbell  and  Bob  Newman,  as  a  Test  Director.  What  was 
supposed  to  be  initially  a  one  year  assignment  turned  out  to  be  the 
rest  of  my  career  at  the  Laboratory. 


698 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Carl  Smith 

SNL  -  -  Shock  Physics 

My  family  were  mechanical  engineers,  and  there  seemed  to  be, 
at  first,  the  typical  role  of  following  my  father  and  older  brother. 
But  it  turned  out  that  there  was  a  physics  course  in  high  school,  with 
a  very  good  teacher  who  steered  me  in  that  direction. 

I  started  at  a  little  college  in  Indiana  called  Earlham.  Then  I 
went  to  Washington  University  in  St.  Louis  for  a  year.  It  turned  out 
that  Brown  had  a  big  program  in  acoustics,  with  people  like  Robert 
Byer,  and  Robert  Bruce  Lindsey.  After  a  year  at  Washington 
University  I  decided,  "Hey,  I'm  real  hot  about  acoustics,  and  the 
field  of  ultrasonics."  And  so,  I  transferred  after  one  year  of 
graduate  school  at  Washington  to  Brown  University,  in  physics. 
There  I  did  my  thesis  on  finite  amplitude  acoustics  -  -  underwater 
water  waves  and  finite  amplitude  effects.  I  got  my  degree  in  1 966. 


699 


I  went  to  Stanford  Research  Institute  in  1966,  and  was  there 
for  almost  ten  years.  SRI  was  still  associated  with  the  University 
when  I  started.  For  many  years  there  had  been  a  loose  federation 
with  Stanford,  but  the  students  rabble-roused  at  Stanford  in  terms 
of  making  the  University  pay  more  attention  to  what  SRI  was  doing 
in  some  of  their  defense  related  work.  The  upshot  of  all  their  rabble 
rousing  was  that  the  two  institutions  were  cut  apart.  That  happened 
while  I  was  there. 

There  were  student  protestors  outside  and  stuff  like  that.  I  was 
reminded  at  that  time  of  Emerson  and  Thoreau,  years  ago.  Thoreau 
was  thrown  in  jail  for  civil  disobedience,  and  Emerson  came  to  see 
him.  Emerson  said,  "What  are  you  doing  in  there,  Henry?"  and 
Henry  Thoreau  said,  "What  are  you  doing  outside?" 

The  separation  didn't  really  make  any  difference  to  the  people 
at  SRI.  The  work  didn't  change.  The  place  had  been  on  its  own  for 
a  number  of  years,  and  was  very  much  entrenched  in  what  it  was 
doing.  It  was  a  minor  name  change  as  far  as  the  way  the  place 
operated.  Our  work  continued,  and  the  place  ran  very  much  as  it 
had  before.  1  stayed  there  until  the  end  of  1975,  and  then  I  went 
to  Sandia,  and  started  there  in  January  of  '76. 

Actually,  I  started  doing  for  Sandia  exactly  what  I  had  been 
doing  for  SRI,  but  it  was  a  job  with  far  more  attractive  opportunities 
to  advance. 


700 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Bill  Twenhofel 
USGS  -  -  Panel  Member 

I  went  to  school  at  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  in  Madison, 
Wisconsin,  and  my  father  was  a  professor  of  geology  there.  And  so, 
of  course,  1  had  to  take  the  beginning  geology  course,  and  I  just  sort 
of  followed  in  my  dad's  footsteps.  1  got  a  bachelor's  degree  in 
1 940,  with  a  major  in  geology  and  a  minor  in  mining  engineering. 

1  went  to  graduate  school  at  Madison  for  one  year,  and  then  I  went 
to  graduate  school  at  the  University  of  California  at  Berkeley. 

When  Pearl  Harbor  occurred  1  was  at  Berkeley,  and  I  left 
graduate  school  and  went  to  work  for  the  U.S.  Geological  Survey  in 
Washington  DC.  Shortly  thereafter  1  was  drafted,  and  I  entered  the 
Navy.  I  went  to  work  at  the  Naval  Research  Laboratory  in 
Washington  DC,  doing  research  on  the  growth  of  artificial  crystals 
for  sonar.  I  worked  there  until  the  war  was  over,  and  then  went  back 
to  graduate  school  at  Madison.  After  another  year  there  I  had  met 
all  the  requirements  except  the  thesis,  and  I  went  back  to  work  for 
the  Geological  Survey. 

I  finally  got  the  thesis  done.  It  was  on  the  geology  of  the 
Alaska-Juneau  gold  mine,  in  Juneau,  Alaska.  The  Alaska-Juneau 
gold  mine  is  unique.  It  had,  at  the  time  it  was  operating,  the  lowest 
grade  ore  of  any  mine  in  the  world,  and  it  still  made  a  profit.  So, 
I  got  my  Ph.D.,  in  geology,  from  the  University  of  Wisconsin  in 
1952. 

When  I  went  to  work  for  the  Geological  Survey  in  the  early  part 
of  the  war,  and  before  I  was  drafted  I  was  assigned  to  the  Alaskan 
work.  Then,  later,  after  the  war,  and  while  I  was  in  school  I  went 
up  to  Alaska  to  do  field  work  in  geology  every  summer.  After  I  left 
Madison  with  all  my  requirements  for  my  degree  except  the  thesis, 
I  was  transferred  by  the  Survey  to  Juneau,  Alaska,  and  lived  there 
year  round,  and  worked  there.  I  loved  it.  For  a  young  fellow,  Alaska 
is  a  great  place,  and  Juneau  was  a  great  little  town.  It  was  just 
wonderful.  You  feel  isolated  a  little  bit,  but  the  hunting,  the  fishing, 
and  the  outdoor  recreation  was  just  great.  So  I  lived  in  Alaska  for 
a  time,  and  then  I  was  transferred  from  Juneau  in  1952. 

I  went  to  Denver,  Colorado,  with  the  Geological  Survey  again. 
I  was  assigned  as  the  assistant  group  leader  to  a  group  studying  the 
uranium  deposits  of  the  United  States.  The  particular  assignment 


701 


of  the  group  I  was  in  was  to  make  estimates  of  the  reserves  of 
uranium  in  the  United  States,  and  in  the  rest  of  the  world.  I  was  not 
involved  in  the  rest  of  the  world,  only  in  the  United  States. 

It  was  a  lot  of  guess  work,  but  we  took  reports  from  mining 
companies,  or  from  government  work.  There  was  a  lot  of  govern¬ 
ment  work,  AEC  work.  You  take  the  reports,  and  you  construct 
conceptual  geologic  models  in  your  mind  of  how  deposits  were 
formed,  and  therefore  something  about  their  size. 

Before  1 952,  about  1 950,  the  only  known  uranium  ore  bodies 
in  the  United  States  were  the  yellow  and  orange  oxidized  uranium 
minerals  that  are  oxidized  because  of  the  surface  processes.  With 
drilling  they  discovered  the  primary  uranium  ore,  which  is  not 
oxidized,  and  that  led  to  some  big  discoveries  in  the  Colorado 
plateau.  I  was  involved  with  that  until  about  1956,  when  the 
underground  test  program  began  out  here.  I  then  got  assigned  to 
the  Geological  Survey  group  that  supported  the  AEC  at  the  Test 
Site. 


702 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Wendell  Weart 
SNL  -  -  Panel  Member 

My  undergraduate  school  was  Cornell  College,  not  to  be 
confused  with  Cornell  University.  I  got  my  undergraduate  degree 
in  '53,  and  then  worked  for  about  three  years  at  the  Ballistic 
Research  Laboratories  at  the  Aberdeen  Proving  Grounds,  in  Mary¬ 
land. 

Then  I  went  back  to  get  my  degree  from  the  University  of 
Wisconsin.  1  was  really  interested  in  geology,  but  as  I  went  along  I 
felt  a  desire  to  get  a  little  more  into  the  hard  physics  of  the  thing, 
rather  than  the  interpretive  aspects  that  geology  mostly  involves. 
So,  I  just  gradually  migrated  into  geophysics. 

I  became  associated  with  Sandia  in  a  fortuitous  way.  I  had 
never  heard  of  Sandia  Laboratories,  and  one  day  I  got  a  letter  in  the 
mail  saying,  "We  have  just  visited  with  your  professor  at  the 


703 


University  of  Wisconsin,  who  says  you  are  in  the  process  of 
completing  your  degree.  We'd  be  interested  in  sponsoring  that  if 
you'd  be  willing  to  come  to  work  for  us."  So  1  started  looking 
around  to  see  who  is  this  "Sandia  Laboratories."  The  part  about 
sponsoring  my  work  sounded  great,  because  their  offer  was  a  lot 
better  than  the  teaching  assistantships  that  were  offered  in  those 
days. 

So,  I  joined  Sandia  in  August  1 959.  It  was,  I  think,  primarily 
because  Sandia  was  trying  to  address  some  of  the  problems  of  a 
possible  test  ban  treaty  that  was  being  much  debated  at  that  time, 
and  they  needed  a  seismologist  and  geophysicist.  At  that  time  we 
were  a  rare  breed. 

I  got  my  Ph.D.  in  1961,  from  the  University  of  Wisconsin. 
They  didn't  grant  a  degree  in  a  specialty,  so  the  degree  was  in 
geophysics,  and  I  did  my  thesis  in  the  area  of  seismology.  That  was 
back  in  the  days  when  there  were  very  few  universities  that  had 
separate  geophysics  degree  programs.  It  was  about  to  change 
greatly  because  of  the  Vela  Uniform  program,  and  all  the  studies 
that  went  on  in  conjunction  with  trying  to  understand  the  seismic 
effects  of  underground  detonations. 

So  I  did  join  Sandia,  primarily  to  do  seismologicaliy  oriented 
work.  But  one  of  the  first  things  I  got  involved  in  when  I  went  to 
Sandia,  which  eventually  led  to  my  containment  related  duties,  was 
to  reenter  an  event  called  Marshmallow,  which  was  a  tunnel  shot 
that  had  been  conducted  in  Area  1 6,  in  1 962.  It  was  a  shot  with 
a  long  line-of-sight  pipe,  in  a  tunnel.  It  was  conducted  for 
experimental  purposes,  rather  than  for  developing  a  device,  and  was 
considered  to  be  a  relatively  successful  event.  There  had  been  only 
a  small  amount  of  experience  with  tunnel  shots,  and  particularly 
with  pipe  shots  in  a  tunnel. 

It  was  fired  about  six  months  after  the  Gnome  event,  which 
incidentally  was,  and  I  find  this  hard  to  believe,  only  about  eight 
miles  from  where  I  have  spent  the  last  fifteen  years  of  my  life 
working  on  a  project,  trying  to  find  a  suitable  means  of  disposing  of 
radioactive  waste. 


704 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Bruce  Wheeler 

USAF/DNA  -  -  Test  Operations 

In  1 95 1  I  was  here,  in  Albuquerque,  being  trained  to  take  care 
of  the  nuclear  weapons  the  Air  Force  had.  After  graduating  from 
the  assembly  course  I  volunteered  for,  and  was  accepted  in,  what 
they  called  the  nuclear  officer  course.  So,  I  got  to  go  to  Los  Alamos 
and  train  there,  and  that  was  a  lot  of  fun. 

So,  I  was  a  second  lieutenant  when  they  put  me  in  the  nuclear 
business,  and  I  stayed  in  it  virtually  the  rest  of  my  thirty  years  in  the 
Air  Force.  And  it  was  good  to  me;  I  got  promoted,  and  I  got  some 
interesting  assignments,  like  DNA. 

I  became  involved  with  DNA  and  the  test  work  through  Ted 
]ones,  who  was  the  Director  of  Test.  That  was  late  in  1971,  and 
I  had  just  been  promoted  to  full  colonel.  I  came  to  work  here  in 
Albuquerque,  and  served  as  the  head  of  operations.  That  meant  I 


705 


was  involved  in  the  details  of  construction,  the  entire  test  bed,  the 
experiment  package  of  the  whole  facility,  and  all  the  aspects  of  it. 
That  included  the  calculations,  the  predictions,  and  the  whole  nine 
yards.  At  that  time  it  seemed  to  me  that  people  were  being  very 
careful,  and  a  very  worried.  They  were  very  desirous  of  putting 
together  a  shot  that  wouldn't  do  anything  untoward. 

There  were  things  changing  even  as  I  came  there.  At  that  time 
there  was  not  a  well-founded,  formal,  well-managed  research  pro¬ 
gram  to  try  to  understand  more  about  the  containment  of  these 
tests,  and  I  thought  we  needed  that.  One  of  the  things  I  tried  to 
encourage,  and  did  encourage  after  I  became  the  boss,  was  to  go 
back  and  look  at  successfully  contained  tests;  to  mine  back  and  see 
how  things  had  worked  right.  As  I  perceived  it,  the  only  time  the 
DNA  dug  back  in  to  see  what  happened  was  when  something  went 
wrong.  I  thought  there  was  a  void  there  that  ought  to  be  filled  with 
some  understanding  of  the  phenomenology  of  a  successfully  con¬ 
tained  test.  We  routinely  planned  to  use  our  contingency  fund  on 
every  test  for  reentry  mining,  if  there  was  any  left,  and  usually  there 
was  some. 

That  job  in  DNA,  when  I  became  Director  of  Test,  was  the  best 
job  I  ever  had.  I  wouldn't  trade  that  for  anything.  It  was  a  field 
operation,  and  I  could  get  the  hell  out  of  the  office.  Somebody 
asked  me,  "Why  do  you  spend  so  much  time  out  there  in  the 
tunnels?"  I  said,  "That's  where  I  go  to  regain  my  sanity."  I  enjoyed 
that  kind  of  work,  being  part  of  putting  something  together,  even 
though  we  blew  it  up  afterwards. 


706 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Irv  Williams 
DOE/DASMA  Staff 

I  did  my  undergraduate  work  at  the  University  of  New  Hamp¬ 
shire.  I  joined  the  Air  Force  in  1950.  I  got  into  the  ordnance 
business,  and  from  there  was  put  into  the  nuclear  weapons  business. 
In  my  early  days  I  was  a  bomb  commander  on  the  old  B-45's.  I  was 
non-rated,  but  assigned  to  a  crew  as  a  weapon  commander  for  the 
B-45's,  in  1952. 

Then  I  went  to  Albuquerque  for  bomb-commander  training.  I 
had  been  trained  as  an  engineer,  and  had  a  lot  of  ordnance, 
armament,  fire  control,  radar  work,  and  so  forth,  with  the  Air 
Force.  And  so  they  flipped  a  coin,  and  this  unit,  which  was  the  first 
tactical  bomber  unit  that  was  equipped  with  nuclear  weapons,  won 
me.  I  stayed  with  them,  and  went  to  England  for  three  years  with 
that  group.  We  were  at  Sculthorpe,  which  is  about  fifteen  miles 
from  Sandringham,  up  in  the  Wash  beyond  Norich.  Norich  is  in 


707 


Northrop  County,  and  it's  quite  near  the  ocean,  where  England  juts 
out  into  the  North  Sea.  There  is  a  big  bay  area,  which  is  called  the 
Wash.  We  operated  there  for  three  years,  from  a  British  base  that 
the  United  States  had  used  during  World  War  II.  We  went  in  there, 
rehabilitated  it,  and  operated  out  of  that  for  three  years.  That  place 
was  really  damp,  wet,  and  rainy,  and  cold.  The  North  Sea  is  very 
cold.  It  never  gets  much  above  about  34  degrees. 

Then  I  came  back  and  went  to  school  at  the  Air  Force  Institute 
of  Technology,  at  Wright  Patterson.  I  was  in  a  course  called  Air 
Ordnance  Engineering,  and  as  a  result  of  that  I  was  picked  up,  and 
zinged  out  to  Kirtland  to  go  back  into  the  weapons  program.  This 
was  after  I  came  out  of  graduate  school. 

After  three  years  at  Albuquerque,  which  was  a  wonderful 
assignment,  doing  nuclear  weapons  work  for  the  B-58  Hustler,  and 
going  through  command  and  staff  school,  I  was  surprised  by  my  next 
assignment,  which  was  to  Livermore.  It  was  out  of  the  blue.  I  had 
asked  to  go  to  the  West  Coast,  and  I  got  a  letter  sending  me  to 
Livermore.  I  was  there  assigned  to  the  Defense  Nuclear  Agency's 
predecessor.  I  first  came  to  the  AEC,  I  would  say,  when  I  first  went 
to  Livermore.  That  was  in  1961. 

I  worked  with  the  engineers  and  the  chemists  in  explosives,  for 
B  Division  at  Site  300.  I  kept  track  of  every  test  design  as  it  grew 
up  during  those  early  days.  1  followed  all  of  them  all  the  way 
through,  and  I  did  that  for  a  good  part  of  three  years.  I  also  spent 
time  down  in  the  plutonium  building  with  Bill  Ramsey,  and  with  Gus 
Dorough  in  explosives.  And  occasionally  I  got  to  the  Test  Site. 

I  was  at  Livermore  from  '6 1  to  '64,  and  I  was  there  before  we 
resumed  testing.  I  was  in  the  office  with  Marv  Martin  when  the  alert 
came  to  move  and  do  a  test.  1  don't  know  who  called  with  those 
instructions,  for  sure,  but  I  know  people  moved,  and  they  went  in 
all  directions  that  afternoon.  Immediately,  after  a  short  council, 
things  started  to  move  immediately. 

So,  I  was  there  at  the  beginning  of  the  resumption  of  testing. 

I  was  able  to  follow  through  the  full  three  years,  and  follow  the 
preparations  for  Dominic,  the  Pacific  operation.  I  also  did  some 
work  with  the  Laboratory  people  at  T ravis,  and  I  spent  several  times 
there  with  the  Hotspot  team,  with  Marv  Martin.  I  had  a  very  good 
introduction  to  the  program.  I  wasn't  part  of  a  design  or  device 
team,  but  I  followed  the  designs  and  all  the  work  in  the  Laboratory. 


708 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


On  a  few  occasions  I  did  help  with  a  little  assembly  work  at  the 
Laboratory,  and  I  worked  down  at  the  Test  Site  with  some 
disassemblies,  with  Ken  Beckman  and  other  fellows  from  W 
Division.  I  got  to  know  a  lot  of  people  because  of  the  opportunities 
I  was  given,  working  with  Marv,  to  work  with  the  Laboratory  people. 
It  was  a  way  to  really  learn  about  the  program.  It  was  a  tremendous 
experience. 


Index 


App,  Fred 

Background  6 1 3 

Atmospheric  pumping 
Peterson,  E. 

Laboratory  experiments  403-405 

Bandicoot  event 
Brownlee,  R. 

Containment  failure  81-82 

Baneberry  event  93 
Hudson,  B;  Rambo,  J:  Weart,  W. 

Containment  failure  557-561 
Drilling  problems  384-386 

Bass,  Bob 

Background  616 

Block  motion 
Patch,  D. 

How  can  blocks  move?  Where's  the  space?  359 
Peterson,  E. 

Effect  on  the  residual  stress  field  359-361 
Importance  to  containment  362-363 
Ristvet,  B. 

Amount  of  movement  observed  350 
Effect  on  the  residual  stress  field  351 
Kinds  of  block  motion  348-349 
Smith,  C. 

Observations  on  reentry  352-353 

Brownlee,  Bob 

Background  620 

Broyles,  Carter 

Background  624 

Bulking  factors 
Keller,  C.  266-267 
Kunkle,  T.  277-278 

Cable  gas  blocks 
House,  J. 

Fiber  optics  cables  530-53 1 
Olsen,  C. 

Gas  blocks  and  fanouts  398,  405 
Ristvet,  B. 

Leakage  through  cables;  DNA  experience  533-534 
Roth,  B. 

Livermore  practice  531-532 


712 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Scolman,  T. 

LASL  gas  blocks  and  fanouts  405-406 

Calculations 
App,  F. 

Effective  stress  models  173-174 
Brownlee,  R. 

First  Los  Alamos  containment  calculations;  Bemillilo,  1 8-24 
Duff,  R, 

Assumption  of  continum  mechanics;  inadequacies  303-312 
Keller,  C. 

The  One  Ton  exercise  168-169 
Rambo,  J. 

For  the  Galena  event  507-508 
Rimer,  N, 

Effective  stress  models;  Pile  Driver  175-176 

Campbell,  Bob 

Background  626 

Camphor  event 
Kennedy,  J. 

Containment  failure  562-565 

Carpetbag  event 
Rambo,  J. 

Areal  subsidence  post-shot  253 

Carroll,  Rod 

Background  629 

Cavity  collapse 
Keller,  C.;  Miller,  R. 

Collapse  to  surface  on  Rainier  Mesa  267-268 
Kunkle,  T. 

Mechanisms  279-280 

Times  of  collapse  273-275 
Miller,  R. 

Hazards  of  delayed  surface  collapses  267 

Cavity  growth 

Patch,  D.:  Rambo,  J. 

Where  does  the  material  go?  252-254 
Patch,  D.;  Rimer,  N. 

Important  factors  230-231 
Rambo,  J. 

Influence  of  rock  properties  230-23 1 

Cavity  pressure 
Brownlee,  B. 

Instances  of  low  pressures  in  standing  cavities  281-282 
Hudson,  B. 

Measurements  in  nuclear  cavities  247-250 
Kunkle,  T. 

Inference  of  low  pressures  prior  to  collapse  28 1 
Rambo,  J. 

Observations  on  Barnwell  282 


Index 


713 


Smith,  C. 

Pressure  in  HE  formed  cavities  246-247 

Cavity  shape 
Patch,  D. 

DNA  interest  in  stemming  column  effects  244-245 
Rambo,  J. 

Measurements  showing  non-spherical  growth  245-246 
Ristvet,  B, 

Information  from  tunnel  reentries  243-244 

Cavity  size 
Bass,  R. 

Junior  Jade  HE  experiments  343-344 
Duff,  R. 

Inability  to  caculate  308-3 1 0 
Higgins,  G. 

Of  the  Rainier  event  36-38,  46-47 
Kunkle,  T. 

Variations  in  scaled  cavity  sizes  233-235 
Patch,  D. 

Determining  the  cavity  boundary  236 
Patch,  D.;  Rambo.  J. 

Effect  of  rock  strength  236-238 
Rambo,  J.;Rimer,  N. 

French  tests  in  Hoggar  granite  242-243 
Rimer,  N. 

Scaled  cavity  sizes  239-240 

Cavity  temperature 
Higgins,  G. 

Temperatures  in  the  first  second  after  detonation  250-252 

Chemistry  of  gases  in  the  chimney 
Duff,  R. 

Unexplained  data  287-290 

Chimney  bulking  factors 
Keller,  C.  291-292 
Kunkle,  T.  302-303 

Chimney  material 

Flangas,  W.;  Weart,  W. 

Characteristics;  seen  on  reentry  278-279 

Chimney  pressurization  experiments 
Peterson,  Ed 

Methods,  conclusions  282-286 

Codes 
App,  F. 

LASL  containment  codes  498 
App  F.;  Bass  R.;  Dismukes  C.;  Patch  D. 

Discussion  of  2-D,  3-D  codes  513-517 
Dismukes,  C. 

Difficulties  in  modeling  5 1 2-5 1 3 


714 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Duff,  R. 

Critique  of  current  approaches  509-5 1 2 
Higgins,  G. 

UNEC,  which  became  SOC  495-496 
Keller,  C. 

KRAK;  JACTS  code  500-502 

Containment 
Brownlee,  R. 

The  price  of  success  546-547 
Why  LASL  used  drill  holes  exclusively  69-70 
Definition  of 

Before  the  Treaty  12 
Nuclear  Test  Ban  Treaty  interpretations  5 
Higgins,  G. 

Containment  of  post-explosion  gases  38 
Scolman,  T. 

Field  costs  545-547 
Successful  containment 
CEP  Charter  definition  7 

Containment  calculations 
App,  F.;  House,  J. 

At  LASL,  currently  503 
Patch,  D. 

Criticisms  directed  at  calculators  517-518 
Rambo,  J. 

At  Livermore,  currently  504-505 

Barnwell;  A  case  study  519-522 

Before  Baneberry,  at  Livermore  496-497 

Collaboration  between  Livermore  and  LASL  506-507 

Galena  event  507-508 

High  yield  vs  low  yield  containment  508-509 

Containment  Evaluation  Panel 
Charter  6 
Comments  about 

Brownlee,  R.  580-581 
Broyles,  C.  94 
Hearst,  J.  581-582 
House,  J.  105-107 
Hudson,  B.  575-576 
Jenkins,  E.  576-577 
Rambo,  J.  506,  582-583 
Ristvet,  B.  583-584 
Scolman,  T.  577-580 
Weart,  W.  580 
Williams,  I  584-506 
Vinceguerra  Committee  report 
Formation  of  the  Panel  93 

Containment  groups;  DNA 
Formation  107-112 

Containment  groups;  Livermore 


Index 


715 


Hudson,  B. 

Formation  91-02 
Role  in  the  sixties  94-96 

Containment  groups;  Los  Alamos 
Brownlee,  R. 

Formation  96-97 
House,  J. 

Assignment  to  the  containment  group  97 
Ineractions  with  Livermore  1 02- 1 05 
Interactions  within  the  Laboratory  527 
Presentations  to  the  CEP  98-99 
Relationship  with  the  USGS  98-99 
Role  of  the  containment  scientist  537-539 
House,  J.;  Kunkle,  T, 

Reorganizations  100-103 

Crater  dimensions 
Keller,  C.;  Kunkle,  T. 

Correlation  with  yield  265-272 
Crossroads  operation 
Campbell,  R.  9 
Current  practices 
House,  J.;  Page,  J.;  Roth,  B. 

Emplacement  of  downhole  hardware  586-589 
Miller,  R. 

Downhole  cable  repairs  383-384 
Page,  J.;  Roth,  B. 

Livermore  downhole  operations  539-543 
What  does  a  Livermore  Test  Director  do?  523-527 

Data  banks 
Keller,  C.;  Rambo,  J. 

Development  of  176-178 
Depth  of  burial 
Higgins,  G. 

Origins  and  evolution  366-372 

Diluted  Waters  event 
Olsen,  C. 

Observers  reactions  87-88 
Dismukes,  Chuck 

Background  630 
Door  Mist  event 
LaComb,  J. 

Containment  failure  554-555 

Double  Play  event 
LaComb,  J. 

Containment  failure  553-554 
Drilling 
Brownlee,  R. 

Early  LASL  drilling  experience;  cased  holes  6 1  -63 


716 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Miller,  R. 

Casing  a  drilled  hole  379 
Development  of  big  hole  drilling  373-375 
Early  Livermore  drilling  experience  62 
Extra  costs  for  containment  related  work  377 
Sloughing  in  drill  holes,  problems  381-382 
Straight  holes  and  plumb  holes  377-378 
Use  of  underreamers  375-377 

Duff,  Russ 

Background  632 

Eagle  event 
Brownlee,  R. 

Possible  cause  of  the  containmrent  failure  551-553 
Olsen,  C.  88 

Energy  coupling  and  ground  motion 
App,  F. 

Relevence  to  containment  207-208 
Higgins,  G. 

Observed  variations  208-211 
Rambo,  J. 

Tybo  ground  motion  calculations  224-227 

Fallout 
Campbell,  R. 

On-site  problems  in  the  fifties  15-16 
Ross,  W. 

Bravo  event  13-15 

Faults 
Orkild,  P. 

Opinion  about  the  faults  on  Oscuro  1 3 1 
Twenhofel,  W. 

Importance  to  containment  130-134 
Weart,  W. 

Pinestripw  eventt;  afault  as  the  path  for  the  vent  1 33 

Fenske,  Paul 

Background  636 

Flangas,  Bill 

Background  639 

Front  end  design 
Dismukes,  C. 

Core  flow  475-476 

Let  the  energy  go  up  the  pipe?  Eagle  event.  473-474 
Reverse  cone  470-478 
Very  low  yield  devices  477 
Peterson,  E. 

Comments  478 

Geology 

Brownlee,  R.;  Orkild,  P.;  Rimer,  N. 

Does  it  matter  to  containment?  134-135 


Index 


Carroll,  R.;  Jenkins,  E. 

Yucca  flats;  the  tuffs  below  the  alluvium  125-127 
Duff,  R.;  Jenkins,  E. 

Frequency  of  faults  354-355 
Orkild,  P. 

Blocks,  definition  347-348 
Clay  beds  136 

Geologic  structure  of  Rainier  Mesa  123-125 
Paleozoic  rocks  125 

Gnome  event 
Higgins,  G.;  Weart,  W. 

Containment  failure  550-55 1 
Greenhouse  Operation 
Campbell,  R.  9 

Ground  motion 
Kunkle,  T. 

Inability  to  predict  274-275 

Hardtack  II  operation  24-25 
Sewell,  D. 

Reason  final  event  not  fired  29-30 
Hearst,  Joe 

Background  642 
Higgins,  Gary 

Background  649 

Horizontal  line-of-sight  pipes 
Duff,  R.;  Patch,  D. 

Pipe  flow  480-481,  488-489 
Patch,  D. 

Assymetric  pipe  closures  481-482 
Ground  motions;  shock  loadings  479-480 
Late  time  calculations  478-479 
Peterson,  E. 

Late  time  containment  issues  487 
Puzzling  observations  about  the  events  492-494 
Rimer,  N. 

Ground  motions  489 
Ristvet,  B. 

Low  yield  sources  490-492 
House,  Jack 

Background  65 1 
Hudson,  Billy 

Background  653 

Hupmobile  event 
Hudson,  B. 

Containment  faillure  91 


718 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Hydrodynamic  yield  measurements 
Bass,  R. 

Development  of  the  slifer  measurements  2 1 7 
The  Universal  Relation  218-219 
Work  with  Los  Alamos  2 1 6 
Brownlee,  R. 

Sonic  velocity  determination  214-216 
Rambo,  J. 

Corrections  to  the  data  219-223 

Differences  between  slifer  and  corrtex  mesurements  222-223 

Hydrofractures  334 
Hudson,  B. 

Good  or  bad  for  containment?  343 
Kunkle,  T.;  Ristvet,  B. 

Observed  frequency  of  fractures  339-340 
Patch,  D. 

Questionable  importance  for  containment  344-345 
Peterson,  E. 

Fracture  formation  331-332 
Steam  generator  experiments  330-33 1 
Rimer,  N. 

Calculational  methods  334-338 
Smith,  C. 

Experimental  work  in  G  tunnel  340-343 

Hydrology 
Fenske,  P. 

Depth  of  the  water  table  at  NTS  140-142 
Early  work  at  the  NTS  138-139 
Perched  water  142-144 
Water  mounds  1 44- 1 45 

Hydronuclear  experiments 
Brownlee,  R. 

Containment  experience  during  the  moratorium  59-60 

Inhomogeneities 
Duff,  R.;  Higgins,  G. 

What  scale  is  important  356-357,  370-372 

Jenkins,  Evan 

Background  656 

Johnson,  Gerry 

Background  658 

Keller,  Carl 

Background  662 

Kennedy,  Jerry 

Background  664 

Kunkle,  Tom 

Background  666 


Index 


719 


LaComb,  Joe 

Background  669 

Leaks  and  seeps 
Hudson,  B. 

Late  time  seeps  on  Pahute  Mesa  402-403 
Keller,  C. 

LASL  attitude  toward  before  Baneberry  396-397 

Logan  event 
Clark,  A. 

Planning,  results  27-29 

Logging  tools 
Fenske,  P. 

Commercial  tools  in  the  fifties  1 79- 1 80 
Hearst,  J. 

Accuracy  and  precision  193-194 
Building  a  calibration  facility  1 85-186 
Dry  hole  acoustic  log  1 95- 1 96 
Epithermal  neutron  log  190-191,  196 
Gravimeter  198-201 
In-situ  strength  204-205 
In-situ  stress  202-204 
Need  for  the  logs  191-192 
Problems  with  calibrations  187-189 
Resistivity  logs  197 
Seismic  surveys  201-202 
Seismic  velocity  198 
Sound  speed  183-184 
Unsuitability  of  commercial  tools  1 83 
Orkild,  P. 

Comments  about  the  epithermal  neutron  log  1 37 
Rambo,  J. 

Beginnings  of  the  Livermore  logging  program  182-183 

Marshmallow  event 
Broyles,  C. 

Containment  features  426-428 
Weart,  W. 

Reentry  observations  428-429 

Material  properties 
App,  F. 

Modeling  159-62 

Optimum  rock  properties  for  containment  322-323 
Over  large  regions  158-159 
Bass,  R. 

Hugoniot  measurements  1 54- 1 56 
Bass,  R.;  Higgins  G. 

Megabar  measurements  1 56- 1 58 
Brownlee,  R.;  Olsen,  C. 

Use  by  rhe  Laboratories  in  the  sixties  148-150 
Hearst,  J. 

Bound  water  vs  free  water  1 90- 1 9 1 


720 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Keller  C 

Permeability  163-165,  286-287 
LaComb,  J. 

Hudson  Moon;  Inferences  from  the  rock  samples  439 
Patch,  D. 

Limitations  of  mechanical  test  data  1 69- 1 70 
Rimer,  N. 

In-situ  strength  174-175 
Shock  damage  to  materials  170-172 
Smith,  C. 

In-situ  equation  of  state  measurements  166-168 
V alue  of  core  data  162-163 
Twenhofel,  W. 

Importance  to  containment  151-154 
Mighty  Oak  event 

Bass,  R.;  Patch,  D.:  Peterson,  E.;  Ristvet,  B. 

Sample  protection  failure  565-570 
Miller,  Roy 

Background  673 

Mint  Leaf  event 
LaComb,  J. 

Leakage  over  the  TAPS  438 

Nevada  Test  Site 
Brownlee,  R. 

Opinions  about  the  value  of  the  Site  113-119 
Selection  by  A1  Graves  11-12 
Miller,  R. 

Annual  variation  of  magnetic  declination  379 
Non-condensable  gas  production 
Higgins,  G.  262-264 
Nuclear  Test  Ban  Treaty  5 

Olsen,  C. 

Background  675 
Line  of  sight  closures  89-9 1 
Pipe  flow  measurements  88-89 

Orkild,  Paul 
Background  677 

Pacific  operations 
Campbell,  R.  13-15 
Johnson,  G.  10-11 
Page,  Jim 

Background  68 1 

Pahute  Mesa 
Orkild,  P. 

Data  collection  128-129 
Late-time  seepage  of  gases  130 


Index 


721 


Pascal  events 

Brownlee,  R.;  Campbell,  R.  20-23 

Patch,  Dan 

Background  681 

Peterson,  Ed 

Background  683 

Pike  event 
Brownlee,  R. 

Containment  failure  84-86 

Pile  Driver  event 
Flangas,  W. 

Mining  in  granite  425-426 

Pipe  flow  calculations 
Hudson,  B;  Olsen,  C. 

At  Livermore,  before  Baneberry  499-500 

Plugs 
House,  J. 

Los  Alamos  use  of  two-part  epoxy  plugs  4 1 2-4 1 3 
Keller,  C. 

First  LASL  use  of  coal-tar  epoxy  plugs  397 
Kunkle,  T. 

Analysis  of  coal-tar  epoxy  plugs  409-41 1 
Olsen,  C. 

Cables  shorted  by  exotherm  in  concrete  plugs  399-400 
Reasons  for  use  by  Livermore  399 
Page,  J.;  Roth,  B. 

Coal-tar  epoxy;  Two  part  epoxy;  Gypsum  cement  535-537 

Post-shot  drilling 
Miller,  R. 

Angle  drilling  389 
Chimney  conditions  386-388 

Prompt  radiochemical  sampling 
Heckman,  R. 

Des  Moines  Event  75-80 
Eel  event  74-75 
Neptune  25-27 
Heckman,  R,;  Higgins,  G. 

Gnome  event  72-73 

Radioacitive  debris 

Differences  on  definition  of  5-6 

Rainier  event 
Flangas,  W. 

Reentry  mining  424-425 
Higgins,  G. 

Cavity  chemistry  51-57 
Cavity  size  38 

Containment  design;  Gene  Pelsor  41 


722 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Fractures  from  the  cavity  57-58,  328-330 
Post-shot  drilling  42-44 
Post-shot  exploration  47-50 
Post-shot  samples  44-46 
Radiochemical  sampling  35 
Seismic  concerns  38-39 
Johnson,  G. 

Concern  about  Rainier  containment;  Fran  Porzel  34-35 
Dave  Griggs  proposes  advance  announcement  39 
"Earthquake  Maker"  32-34 
Planning  31-33 
Site  selection  32 

Rainier  Mesa 
Flangas,  W. 

Selection  as  site  for  Rainier  469 
Rambo,  John 

Background  686 

Ranger  operation  12 
Readiness  to  resume  testing 

Brownlee,  R.;  Wouters,  L.;  Foster,  J.  63-65 
Red  Hot  event 

Duff,  R.;  Risrvet,  B.;  Smith,  C. 

Post-shot  fractures  observed  326-328 
Peterson,  E. 

Containment  attributed  to  fractures  332-333 

Residual  stress 
App,  F. 

Doubts  about  the  existence  30 1  -302 
Bass,  R. 

Evidence  for;  Sandia  Puff  and  Tuff  experiment  295-297 
Broyles,  C. 

HE  experiments  showing  a  stress  cage  295 
Duff,  R. 

Case  against  residual  stress  303-308 
Higgins,  G. 

Early  evidence  for  recompaction  292-294 
Hudson,  B. 

Difficulties  in  trying  to  measure  300-301 
Patch,  D. 

Duration  of  residual  stresses  320-322 
Rambo,  J. 

Decay  of  residual  stresses  317 
Evidence  from  calculations  299-300,  313 
Field  measurements  313-314 
Importance  of  shear  strengh  314-317 
Orkney  event;  data  indicating  residual  stress  314 
Rimer,  N.  174 

Duration  of  residual  stresses  319-320 

Grout  sphere  experiments  3 1 8 

Well  known  concept  in  civil  engineering  294-295 


Index 


723 


Smith,  C. 

Evidence  for  from  HE  work  297-298 
Evidence  from  nuclear  shots  299 

Rimer,  Norton 

Background  688 

Ristvet,  Byron 

Background  690 

Rock  melt 
Higgins,  G, 

Amount  of  melted  rock  produced  211-212 
Effect  of  water  259-262 

Importance  of  water  content  of  the  rocks  240-24 1 
Rock  melted  per  kiloton  of  yield  255-262 

Roth,  Bemie 

Background  693 

Sandstone  operation 
Campbell,  R.  9 

Scolman.  Tom 

Background  695 

Scooter  experiment 
Bass,  R. 

Cause  of  the  misfire  65-68 
Pressure  measurements  213-214 

Scroll  event 
Olsen,  C. 

Containment  failure  555-556 

Smith,  Carl 

Background  698 

Stemming 
Brownlee,  R. 

Evolution  to  Los  Alamos  Standard  5  stemming  392-394 
Brownlee,  R.;  Scolman,  T. 

Stemming  slumps  and  rates  of  stemming  395-396 
House,  J. 

Reasons  for  Livermore/Los  Alamos  stemming  plans  397-398 
Hudson,  B. 

Comparison  of  LASL  and  Livermore  stemming  history  413-414 
Current  Livermore  stemming  philosophy  401-402 
Why  two  different  stemming  plans?  417 
Page,  J. 

Problem  on  Galena  543-544 
Rambo,  J.  459-162 

Stemming  platforms 
Hudson,  B. 

Gypsum  concrete  plugs  408 
Plugs  and  fines  layers  400-401 


724 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Scolman,  T. 

LASL  plugs  not  considered  to  be  stemming  platforms  406-408 

Tamalpias  Event 
Flangas,  W. 

Hydrogen  explosion  421-424 

Test  Evaluation  Panel 
Olsen,  C.  83-84 

Thoughts,  Opinions,  and  Concerns 
Bass,  R.  588-589,  593-594 
Brownlee,  R.  595-596 
Broyles,  C.  601-602 
Duff,  R.  589-592 
Flangas,  W.  593 
Hudson,  B.  604-607 
Keller,  C.  603 
Kunkle,  T.  593 
Olsen,  C.  587-588 
Orkild,  P.  589 
Peterson,  E.  597-600 
Rimer,  N.  594-595 
Scolman.  T.  602-603 
Twenhofel,  W.  592 
Wheeler,  B  603-604 

Tunnel  containment 
Duff,  R. 

Importance  of  air-fdled  voids  439-440 
Keller,  C. 

Unexplained  variations  from  shot  to  shot  446 
LaComb,  J. 

Cable  gas  blocks  441 

High  strength  grout  436 

Misty  North;  first  use  of  two  overburden  plugs  441 
Patch,  D. 

Grout  stemming  designs  437-438 
Peterson,  E. 

Differences  of  opinion  about  air-filled  voids  440 
Peterson,  E.;  Weart,  W. 

Same  designs,  different  results  433-435 
Weart,  W. 

Changes  after  Baneberry  446-45 1 

Stemming  on  Marshmallow  and  Gum  Drop  432-433 

Tunnel  sample  protection 
DBS;  Debris  Barrier  System 

Kennedy,  J.  458 
FAC;  Fast  Acting  Closure 

Bass,  R.;  Kennedy,  J.;  design  455,  461 

Keller,  C.;  purpose  455-456 

Patch,  D;  need  for  timing  456-458 
Helix 

Bass,  R.  Experience  on  tunnel  events  485-486 


Index 


725 


Keller,  C.:  on  early  events  468 
Keller,  C.;  experiments  with  HE  483-485 
Kennedy,  J. 

Early  HE  machines;  dimple  machines  460 
HE  driven  vertical  closure  458 

Joint  DNA/Sandia  funding  of  hardware  development  459-460 
MAC;  Modified  Auxiliary  Closure 
Bass,  R.;  Importance  of  MAC  survival  for  100  msec  463 
Bass,  R.;  Ristvet,  B.;  High  pressure  gas  vs  propellents  463 
Broyles,  C.;  Deveopment  leading  to  the  MACS  429-430 
Broyles,  C.;  Sandia  participation  in  development  454-455 
Kennedy,  J;  development  of  458-459 
Wheeler,  B.;  Sandia  participation  in  development  453-454 
Ristvet,  B. 

People  involved  in  the  development  461 
TAPS;  Tunnel  and  Pipe  Seal 
Kennedy,  J.;  description  458 
Weart,  W. 

Early  philosophy  432 

Tunnel  usage 
LaComb,  J. 

Reuse  after  leaks  into  the  tunnel  complex  442 
Wheeler,  B. 

Participation  by  the  military  services  443 

Tunnels 
Carothers,  J. 

Why  LASL  never  used  tunnels  70 
Flangas,  W. 

First  DNA  interest  in  N  tunnel  and  P  tunnel  436 
Ristvet,  B. 

Value  of  reentries  244 

Tunnels,  research 
Keller,  C. 

Development  of  the  low-yield  test  bed  444-445 
LaComb,  J.;  Ristvet,  B. 

Motivation  to  do  442,  45 1 
Smith,  C. 

Stresses  loading  containment  hardware  439-440 
Weart,  W. 

Use  of  early  measurements  448-440 

Twenhofel,  Bill 

Background  700 

Tybo  event.  See  Energy  coupling  and  ground  motion:  Rambo,  J.:  Tybo  ground 
motion  calculations 

Uncased  emplacement  holes 
Miller,  R. 

Concerns  about  their  use  380-381 
Scolman,  T. 

Use  by  Los  Alamos  381 


726 


CAGING  THE  DRAGON 


Underground  shots 
Brownlee,  R. 

Need  forseen  by  A1  Graves  17-18 
Johnson,  G. 

Need  for  underground  shots  23-24 
Teller,  E.  &  Griggs,  D. 

Report  on  feasibility  16 

USGS 
Orkild,  P. 

NTS  geologic  data  bases  136-137 
Twenhofel 

Early  mapping  of  the  NTS  119-120 
Twenhofel,  W. 

HE  shots  before  Rainier  1 20- 1 2 1 

Vertical  lines-of-sight 
Duff,  R. 

Measurements  on  front  end  performance  469 
Hudson,  B. 

Earliest  Livermore  designs  465,  469 
Keller,  C. 

Assymetric  pipe  closures  467-468 

Early  front  end  design  at  LASL  466-467 

Early  LASL  pipe  flow  measurements  466-467 

Weart,  Wendell 

Background  702 

Wheeler,  Bruce 

Background  704 

Williams,  Irv 

Background  706 


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Dist-3 


DTRA/SCC-WMD  Scientific  &  Technical  Review  Information 


1 .  PA  CONTROL  NUMBER: 

fPr  /3',3 

33  . 

1 3 

la.  SUSPENSE: 

2.  PM  /  PHONE  /  EMAIL: 

Herbert  Hoppe  767-1797 

2a.  DATE: 

3.  BRANCH  CHIEF  /  PHONE  /EMAIL: 

3a.  DATE: 

4.  DIVISION  CHIEF  /  PHONE: 

4a.  DATE: 

5.  DEPARTMENTS  /  PHONE: 

1  /J  // 

5a.  DATE: 

6.  JDir/ OFFICE /PHONE: 

yv 

6a.  DATE: 

7.  PUBLIC  AFFAIRS: 

7a.  DATE: 

7.  TITLE:  Caging  the  Dragon  The  Containment  of  Underground  Nuclear  Explosio  8.  CONTRACT  NUMBER: 

9.  ORIGINATOR: 


LLNL  Sponsored  by  DOE/NVO  and  DNA 


10.  TYPE  OF  MATERIAL:  0  PAPER  □  PRESENTATION  0  ABSTRACT  0  OTHER  Report 


11.  OVERALL  CLASSIFICATION:  0  CONTRACTOR 


PROJECT  MANAGER  Unclassified  /  a 


A.  Review  authority  for  unclassified  material  is  the  responsibility  of  the  PM.  Your  signature  indicates  the  material  has  a  4*43 

undergone  technical  and  security  review. 


B.  Warning  Notices/Caveats: 


C.  Distribution  Statement: 


□  RD  Q  FRD  0  CNWDI 

0  SUBJECT  TO  EXPORT  CONTROL  LAWS 


A.  Approved  for  public  release;  distribution  is  unlimited  (unclassified  papers  only). 

B.  Distribution  authorized  to  U.S.  Government  agencies  only;  (check  the  following): 


— 

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0  NATO  RELEASABLE 


Cleared 

for  public  release 


JUL  1  1  £013 


rn 


□ 


□ 


Public  Affairs 

Defense  Threat  Reduction  Agency 
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<A 

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0 


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E.  Distribution  authorized  to  DoD  Components  only;  (check  the  following): 

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F.  Further  dissemination  only  as  directed. 

X.  Distribution  authorized  to  U.S.  Government  agencies  and  private  individuals  or  enterprises  eligible  to  obtain  export-controlled 
technical  data  in  accordance  with  DoD  Directive  5230.25  (unclassified  papers  only). 


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12.  MATERIAL  TO  BE:  0  Presented  0  Published  Date  Required: 


13.  NAME  OF  CONFERENCE  OR  JOURNAL: 


14.  REMARKS:  TThe  document  was  published  in  1995  as  a  joint  DOE  and  DNA  report.  In  DoD,  secondary  distribution  is  Distribution  C, 


DTRA/SCC-WMD  Form  58  (MAY  13)  (Adobe  LiveCycle  ES) 


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